All the president’s women are Duterte’s fiercest critics
DAVAO, Philippines/MANILA: 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 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 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.
Duterte has joked about rape, insulted the Pope and baffled friends and foes with often contradictory public statements. Neither this, nor his profanityladen 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 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.
In a recent statement, even Human Rights Watch — a fervent critic of the drug war — acknowledged Duterte’s “strong support” for legislation aimed at protecting and promoting women.
After nearly 15 months in power, he remains highly popular with men and women alike, according to the latest survey by Manilabased pollster Social Weather Stations.
While foreigners frown at Duterte’s rape jokes, says Gina Lopez, a former environment secretary in Duterte’s cabinet, Filipinos judge him by his actions not his words.
“When I see him dealing with women in the cabinet or whatever, he has been very above- board, very decent,” she told Reuters.
She said 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.
In a statement to Reuters, the president’s office called Duterte “an advocate of women’s rights” who had launched a “massive campaign against gender bias” while mayor of Davao. — Reuters