Rappler’s series of presidential profiles begins with the idealized candidate. Here, in the first of a 3-part series, we present the narrative we believe best embodies a candidate’s ideal self. Our portrayal of the imagined candidate is based on how the candidates – and their supporters – project themselves. No candidate is perfect, but by parsing out the idealized narrative, we hope to prompt reflection on which virtues of leadership, at least in principle, appeal most to us.

Welcome to the badlands. The peace is broken. No citizen is safe. Criminals work overtime, and the government is in on the deal. The airports are corrupt. The ports are corrupt. The police are corrupt. Every purchase is padded. Every addict is armed. 

It is a nation ruled by sugar barons and swaggering drug kingpins, where overseas workers are bled dry, where farmers go hungry, and where old women clutching toddlers are shoved off jeeps into the sweaty heat whenever the fucking pope comes calling. The filthy rich pay off the taxmen. Teenaged bandits ply their trade. Machine guns are stolen from the military and blood runs through the tall grass, while those on television investigating may not really care why.

This is the Republic of the Philippines in the bleak first months of 2016. This is the country Rodrigo Duterte promises to save. The law may be optional, the thugs may be at the helm, but Duterte is a man who says what he means and means what he says, who will give you a warning and then count to 3.

See him, watch him, bursting into the night in a roar of chrome and steel. Tell the crooks to run. Tell the pimps to hide. Blow out the smoke, get out, steer clear, and fuck all the fuckers who get in the way.

‘It’s going to be bloody’

In February of 2015, Rodrigo Duterte said he would seek the presidency if only to save the nation from war.

“I can make this sacrifice if only to save this country from being fractured,” he said.

Of course, he said later, he never really wanted to run. His statement wasn’t ambition so much as vision. In speeches across the country, in a listening tour that ran the course of almost a year, he explained why he wasn’t running, why he didn’t plan to, or want to, or felt compelled to – a coyness that only roused calls for his candidacy.

“I’m telling the Filipino people, not me. It’s going to be bloody,” he said. “Because I will not sit there as president and just like any other regime, say, ‘That’s all I can do.’ If you put me there, do not fuck with me.”

He is 70 years old, this hero from the south. He is tired, he says. He is old, he is looking to retirement, he would rather stay in bed and sleep. He has “enough accolades” in his lifetime “to be happy.”

The maybe-maybe-not dance ended in November. Not, it turned out, to save the nation from war, but because of the possibility Grace Poe, who once held American citizenship, might be allowed to run for president. 

“I’ve been warning everybody, I said I am not interested, it does not appeal to me, and I do not have a need for it. But if this is how the game is played in the country, then the option to run is on the table.”

In the world as imagined by Rodrigo Duterte, the nation he has been called to rescue is filled with idiots and innocents, set on by crooks and thugs. The idiots break the law because nobody tells them they can’t, the virtuous are prey for criminals and thugs, all while the Palace gives the orders, and the provinces say amen.

“The Filipino now, he can’t be told to obey the law,” he says. “So tell him, this is the law, and fuck it, if he doesn’t follow the law, he’s fucked with me.”

‘Am I the death squad? True. That is true.’

The cliché that every politician repeats, says Duterte, is that the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer, and the system needs change.

“Why don’t you just do it? Just shut up, and just do it,” he tells Rappler.

“Would you be able to do it?” he is asked.

“I will.”

“I will” is the crux of Duterte’s narrative. He can get it done. He is the Godfather, the Punisher, John Wayne riding in from the mesas to save the helpless townfolk, Jack Nicholson howling about the truth, the charismatic caudillo whose popularity springs from the same place Franco and Bolivar and Peron once drew theirs – the promise of certain change, by whatever means necessary. 

He will restore order, he says. He is the man who will break rules and pull triggers for the sake of the weeping innocent. Watch him, the man in fatigues cradling the rifle – the big man with the big gun and the big threats, whose moral code is the code of the wild.

He has killed, he says – killed 3 in previous months, killed 1,700, not just 700, killed in running gun battles, and will kill a rapist with pleasure. He won’t kill a woman. He won’t kill a child. He will not negotiate. He will take no prisoners. He believes in the death penalty.

He stands for retribution, he tells Esquire, not rehabilitation. Smoke a cigarette and he’ll feed you the cigarette butt. Cross the street when you shouldn’t and he might just run you over.

So fuck you, he says. Too bad for you, damn you – I told you, follow the law. 

He sees himself as a man of action. “You ask me a question, I can give you my decision. If you would tell me something is brewing there, I will say, ‘This is it.’”

If his efforts are blocked by the legislature, he will declare a revolutionary government and close down Congress. If Customs officials plant bullets in luggage, he will be happy to shove those bullets down their throats. If China refuses to talk to the Philippines, “you’ll see me standing on Spratlys, and you’ll just have to kill me.”

(READ: The Leader I Want: Rodrigo Duterte”s to-fix list for 2016)

He will end poverty. He will build comfortable lives for all Filipinos. He will fix government. He will open all the books. He will stop corruption. He will end traffic, upgrade the airports, install state-of-the-art anti-pollution equipment, offer food security, bring prosperity to the south, and maybe even install a federal government.

In 3 months to 6, there will be no criminality. In 3 months to 6, there will be no drugs.

“If I have to kill you, I’ll kill you. Personally.” 

Exhibit A

If Grace Poe, at the height of her inspirational popularity, filled a deficit of compassion, Duterte fills a deficit of competence. His confidence springs from the solid success he has made of Davao. Even the worst of his detractors will concede his gift for getting things done.

“When I became mayor,” he said, “everything was topsy-turvy.” Now Davao is at the center of a boom in the south. The city has been applauded and celebrated. Duterte has cut through red tape and made the streets safe for his citizens. His city is an example not just for the country, but for the region.

Davao, he says, is his “Exhibit A.”

The same weaknesses that his critics decry – his cursing, his machismo, his tendency to violence, his ruthless disregard for social niceties – are the same reasons his legion of believers cheer on his candidacy. His supporters run the gamut from taxi drivers to business leaders. Security, he says, is the root of progress. 

He calls himself leftist and socialist. He maintains ties with rebels and separates them from criminals –  “One is for pocket, and the other one is ideology.” He has enforced anti-discrimination ordinances supporting LGBT communities while speaking up for the rights of the indigenous. He supports reproductive health and the legalization of divorce. 

“You judge me,” he says, “not by the cuss words, epithets, and curses that you hear. Judge me for what I stand for, the values that I hold dear.”

Progressives who would have opposed him on principle have thrown in their lot with him. Even his admitted sexist behavior – “I was also charged with acts of lasciviousness. But you know the woman was really very, very beautiful that if you do not touch her, you will die. I was just saving my life,” – is explained away by his support for women’s rights.

The politics of retribution

Duterte is charming and disarming, playing to a crowd used to cliché and platitude. He pokes fun at sacred cows, needles his more straitlaced opponents, and laughs when they fight back. He steps onto a debate stage when every other candidate has refused. He is the provincial prosecutor who went head-to-head with criminals and won. He is both protector and punisher, the mayor who cleaned up a city where “every Tom Dick and Harry claiming to be a communist fighter had a gun.”

He promises to be a simple president. He will take nothing beyond his salary. He will not accept campaign donations from people with vested interests. There will be no expensive banquets. His entourage on official trips will be reduced to 5. He will not sleep in the Palace, and instead will fly daily to his house in Davao City, promising expenses will be covered by a local pastor. He shrugs off security risks – “I believe that if it’s your time, nothing can stop it.”

He does not claim to be one of the people. He promises instead to save them from themselves.

His is not a class war – although he will add that he is a poor man’s son – so much as it is a war against the politics of patience and accommodation. He says fuck the bleeding hearts, to hell with the bureaucracy. There will be no forgiveness, there will be no second chances, the line will be drawn, and on one side he will stand with a loaded gun. 

Duterte stands for the politics of the extreme, powered by desperation and public frustration. He plumbs every fear and names every enemy. He voices the helplessness and rage of Filipinos forced to make do in a country where corruption is casual and crime is ordinary. When you vote for him, you vote against every cop who screwed you, every thief who stole from you, every grinning politician who forgot the promises he made to you.

Duterte has your back, and he says the struggle ends here, today. He goes beyond anger, even beyond solutions. Digong Duterte offers retribution.

See him, watch him, bursting into the night in a roar of chrome and steel. Tell the crooks to run. Tell the – Rappler.com

(Editor’s note: All quotes have been translated from their original form to English.)

Patricia Evangelista is Rappler’s multimedia manager. She is an international fellow of the Dart Center Ochberg Fellowship for Trauma Reporting and was awarded the Kate Webb Prize for exceptional journalism in dangerous conditions. In 2016, she received The Outstanding Young Men award for the field of journalism. Tweet her @patevangelista.

Nicole Curato is a sociologist from the University of the Philippines. She is currently a Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow at the Center for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance based in Canberra. In 2013, she received The Outstanding Young Men award for the field of sociology. Tweet her @NicoleCurato.

THE IMAGINED PRESIDENT

Rappler”s presidential profile series maps the narratives presented by both candidates and critics in the campaign for 2016