Duterte and Trump: A comparison

The US elections are drawing near and the fervor is reaching a fever pitch similar to the one the Philippines experienced earlier this year. As the election draws near I can’t help but look at the current president of the Philippines and compare him to the would-be president of one of the most powerful countries in the world.

This isn’t the first time similarities have been made. After all, both leaders have very colorful personalities and tend to say whatever’s on their mind without actually thinking first. On the outside though they are nothing alike. Donald Trump is a businessman who has been on the hot seat as of late because of his never-ending attack on minorities while showing very little knowledge or appreciation of the complexities of politics. He has no experience in the political arena and, instead, plans to leverage his knowledge of business to turn America “great again.” He constantly contradicts himself and has been known to say so many questionable things that TV networks have begun to “fact-check” his speeches in real time just to be able to discern what is real from what is fiction.

President Duterte, on the other hand, is a political savvy lawyer. As the mayor of Davao for decades and a trained man of the law, Duterte is hardly the political outsider his image makes him out to be. People discussed him as the politician who was not embroiled in the usual corruption that mars Philippine politics, but the fact remains that he has been in the arena for years and knows how to navigate it. I’ve said that I think he is quite a brilliant tactician and how he ran his campaign and got elected by the widest majority of Filipino voters in history goes to show that President Duterte knows how to play the game, as it were. If politics were like “Game of Thrones,” President Duterte knew just what to do to emerge victorious.

Not that I think he is disingenuous, in fact, quite the opposite. He is as real as they get. However, he did see a landscape that practically assured him victory and he went for it. Filipinos have been ripe for change for a while now and many of them saw the president as their way of achieving that change they so longed for. That is why he is so popular and why his fan base is so rabid. It is made up of hardworking Filipinos who are frustrated at not seeing any changes or improvements in their daily lives. It’s no secret that frustration breeds contempt and after years and years of the same type of leaders and the same type of politics, Filipinos have had enough. And they feel that the President understands them and sympathizes with them. I believe he does too. He has always made it clear that his goal is to help those most in need.

In a way, a lot of similar feelings are happening in America right now as well. That is perhaps why a candidate as glaringly unqualified in politics as Trump has somehow made it as far as he has. The reason his message of “Make America Great Again” is so strong in certain places in the United States is that so many Americans are not happy with the way America is now. The same type of divisiveness is happening there as it did here and who knows what type of result that will bring come Election Day.

Personally, I do feel that Duterte and Trump are very different people. However there are similarities as well that we can’t deny. Both of these well-known figures wield a large amount of power and influence and both of them have been known to shoot from the hip and say things they may not have really meant. They are easily taken out of context and they are cannon fodder for the media because every time one story dies down these men are right there ready to provide another.

Not to mention, both of them lack a sense of diplomacy. That comes with the territory of unbridled machismo and strength I would suppose but it simply does not belong in the political arena. After all, politics, by the very definition of the principle is being able to work with others towards a better future. As we’ve all said many times, we don’t live isolated from the rest of the world anymore and international relations is very important in the way we live our lives.

This is true for every country. Unless we want to be like North Korea where no one is allowed to know what is happening. Who wants to live like that? It’s terrifying because someone is always on the brink of pushing a button and starting a war. And a country like North Korea, with nuclear capabilities and a very temperamental dictator, is always poised to begin that type of war that no one can win. We can only hope and pray that that does not happen.

So again, no one country should be isolated from the rest of the world. After all, what happens around the world affects us all now and we’re all in this together. While I admire President Duterte’s passion for improving the lives of all Filipinos, I truly hope he will be more careful about what he says and how he treats the international community. We all need to work together to achieve success. Hopefully, President Obama cancelling his planned meeting with President Duterte is not going to be something that becomes common when it comes to foreign dignitaries.

I believe that at his core, President Duterte is not like Donald Trump. But he has to understand when to pull back and when to be careful when it comes to voicing his opinion. No one is telling him to back down and cower in fear, but just to be respectful of his peers in the political arena. Only then can he become a true international statesman. I believe it’s possible, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.