How President Rodrigo Duterte became a global game-changer

This is the man who infamously called President Barack Obama a “son of a wh*re”, insulted the Philippines’ US ambassador Philip Goldberg with a homophobic slur, warned senior figures in the Catholic Church not to “f*ck with him”, and accused the United Nations of issuing “sh*tting” statements about his anti-drug policies.

But there’s a lot more to the Philippine president’s colourful language and headline-grabbing antics than meets the eye.

Beyond the swear words and I’ll-do-as-I-please attitude is a leader filled with frustration towards the United States, and a desire to showcase independence.

HOW DUTERTE BECAME A GLOBAL GAME-CHANGER

Duterte’s anti-Americanism stems largely from his background. He was the first ever president to hail from the country’s south, in a troubled region directly taken over the United States.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an interview with his sister Jocellyn, Duterte’s resentment dates back to a three-year war between the United States and the Philippines in 1898, which cost anywhere between 250,000 and a million Filipino lives.

What followed was decades of control and constant supervision by the United States — benevolent control, but control nonetheless.

“Mr. Duterte’s nationalism echoes sentiments common among left-leaning Filipinos that America never atoned for invading the archipelago in 1898 and violently subduing the former Spanish colony,” the WSJ explains.

“With independence in 1946, the Philippines passed into the hands of what many left-leaning politicians such as Mr Duterte regarded as a corrupt Manila elite installed by Washington.”

What would continue into the man’s presidency was an ongoing desire to “reclaim” the Philippines’ independence.

We’ve seen this happen time and time again.

Mr Duterte drew gasps from the United States during his four-day trip to Beijing a few weeks ago, after he announced a major shift in alliances.

“In this venue, I announce my separation from the United States,” Mr Duterte told a hall of Chinese and Philippine business people. His words were met with applause as he announced “America has lost”, and that he has “realigned” himself with China’s ideological flow.

He even said he would go to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin.

“(I will) tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way,” Mr Duterte told the Beijing audience.

Duterte’s message is clear: the Philippines is an independent nation, not just another colony belonging to the United States.

He feels particularly frustrated by the Obama administration’s criticism of his murderous crackdown on drug dealers in the Philippines — a controversial policy that has seen the leader labelled a “psychopath” and a “serial killer”.

In an October interview with Al Jazeera, Duterte said Obama’s criticism was a clear source of his frustration with America.

“Had America just followed the normal procedure of calling the attention of a country to a certain violation, that would affect the laws of humanity, it could have just followed the due process, which is normally — according to everybody — going to the United Nations, airing a grievance and demanding an investigation,” he said.

“It should begin in the internal body of the United Nations because we are, or the Philippines is, a member of the United Nations.”

WHY IS DUTERTE SO CRASS?

Let’s face it — most people outside the Philippines only know the president’s name because of his colourful language.

But Dr Adele Webb, a PhD researcher at University of Sydney’s Department of Government and International Relations, said Duterte is just expressing frustration over the two countries’ history.

“Why is the Philippines president so angry about the prospect of the US president confronting him about human rights abuses? History,” wrote Dr Webb in The Conversation.

“As Duterte said himself on Monday, violent acts of the past don’t stay in the past. They get passed on from generation to generation, especially when the injustice goes unacknowledged and unaddressed.”

She acknowledged that, while his brutal “war on drugs” deserves condemnation, his headline-grabbing antics and colourful language are designed to draw attention to the wider issues at hand — namely the quest for independence.

“Let’s be honest, if Duterte didn’t curse and swear and offend our sensibilities, would we be paying so much attention to the Philippines? For once, I heard a (Filipino) president holding the US to account for all its doublespeak and hypocrisy in US-Philippines relations.”

Dr Webb acknowledged that Duterte’s style — almost Trump-like in its crudeness — is difficult to stomach. She also condemned his war on drugs, which she described as a “misuse of power”.

“But if we condemn the president for his recent remarks because we claim to be concerned about the rights of Filipinos while showing no interest in acknowledging the past crimes and injustices against the Philippines, we fall into our own sort of hypocrisy.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE PHILIPPINES?

The past few months have seen an ongoing shift in the Philippines’ role in the world.

As tensions increase in the South China Sea, Mr Duterte’s decision to engage in peace talks with China was a clear snub to the United States, with whom the Philippines is an ally.

It came mere months after a tribunal in The Hague ruled Beijing had no historic rights to the South China Sea, in a case brought by the previous administration in Manila.

He also publicly said the Philippines is willing to hold joint military exercises with China and Russia.

This marked a major reversal in foreign policy.

In a pre-trip interview with Xinhua, China’s state news agency, Duterte stressed he prefers negotiation to confrontation.

“There is no sense in going to war. There is no sense fighting over a body of water,” he said. “It is better to talk than war. We want to talk about friendship, we want to talk about co-operation, and most of all, we want to talk about business. War would lead us to nowhere.”

He also made it clear he opposed outside meddling in the disputed region.

“We are not interested in allowing other country to talk. I just want to talk to China,” he said.

“If we can have the things you have given to other countries by the way of assistance, we’d also like to be a part of it and to be a part of the greater plans of China about the whole of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia.

“All that I would need to do is just to talk and get a firm handshake from the officials and say that we are Filipinos and we are ready to co-operate with you, to help us in building our economy and building our country.”

He also stressed he would no longer allow joint exercises with the US, which has traditionally been the country’s closest ally.

“This will be the last. It has been programmed,” he said.

China’s President Xi Jinping called the visit a “milestone” in ties.

He told Mr Duterte that China and the Philippines were brothers and they could “appropriately handle disputes”, though he did not mention the South China Sea specifically in remarks made in front of reporters.

While none of this sounded good for the US, Duterte’s top economic policymakers soon released a statement saying that, while Asian economic integration was “long overdue”, that did not mean the Philippines was turning its back on the West.

While his rhetoric doesn’t appear to be easing, the relationship between the two countries isn’t broken yet.

Whether it will sustain itself is yet to be seen.