Duterte’s sister dubs him chauvinist in candid interview

Jocellyn says Philippines President has a problem with women but deals with them very decently Jocellyn also traces Duterte’s authoritarianism to Soledad, their mother, who punished her children with a horsewhip or made them kneel at an altar for hours

Davao, Manila, Sept. 14: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has a problem with women, says the woman who has known him longer than perhaps any other: his sister Jocellyn.

“He’s a chauvinist,” she told Reuters in a recent interview. “When he sees a woman who fights him, it really gets his ire.”

Then Ms Jocellyn ran through a list of Duterte’s female critics that included his vice-president, a prominent senator who is now in jail and the head of the Philippines Supreme Court.

All three have sparred with Mr Duterte after denouncing his brutal war on drugs, which has killed thousands of people in the Asian nation since he took office in June 2016.

“When I see him dealing with women in the Cabinet or whatever, he has been very aboveboard, very decent,” she told Reuters.

She said that this decency also once extended to vice-president Leni Robredo, who has publicly fallen out with Duterte. She is from an Opposition party and was elected separately.

“He really liked Ms Leni. They got along and he was always flirting,” said Lopez. “That’s what men do, right?”

Ms Jocellyn, who refers to the President as “the mayor,” said Mr Duterte still eats the same simple food their mother Soledad once cooked: cheap fish simmered in vinegar.

She also traces Mr Duterte’s authoritarianism to Soledad, who punished her children with a horsewhip or made them kneel at an altar for hours.

“You can see that in the mayor,” says Jocellyn. “Sometimes people perceive it as arrogance or call it close to being a dictator. But we grew up in that atmosphere.”

Their father Vicente, also a politician, was often absent, and the young Duterte saw the bodyguards, police and soldiers around him as role models, his sister said.

He grew up in a macho culture where wives and daughters were expected to be submissive, Ms Jocellyn said.

His daughter Sara is anything but. In 2011, during her first term as Davao’s mayor, she was caught on camera punching a local official who angered her.

Mr Duterte has joked about rape, insulted the Pope and baffled friends and foes with often contradictory public statements. Neither this, nor his profanity-laden reactions to women critics, seem to have dented his popularity among Filipinos.

The 72-year-old President is a self-confessed womaniser who once told a large gathering of local officials, “I can’t imagine life without Viagra.”

On the campaign trail last year, he joked about the gang rape of an Australian missionary who was killed in a prison riot. Speaking to Philippine troops in May, he said that he would take responsibility for any rape they might commit.

But women’s rights advocates also praise him for handing out free contraceptives in his hometown, Davao City, where he was mayor for 22 years, and for championing a reproductive health bill opposed by the country’s influential Catholic Church.

He’s a chauvinist. When he sees a woman who fights him, it really gets his ire

— Jocellyn Duterte, Duterte’s sister