Rodrigo Duterte, a crime-busting mayor and self-confessed womanizer, has rocketed ahead of established rivals in the latest opinion poll on the Philippines’ presidential race.
The 70-year-old, who only filed his candidacy last month, took a 38 percent share in the poll by Social Weather Stations. Philippine Senator Grace Poe and Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay, the front-runners in previous surveys, each got 21 percent, according to the survey conducted from Nov. 26 to Nov. 28.
The mayor of Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao has become a national figure through his hard line on crime. He has said drug addicts should be executed, despite capital punishment being outlawed in the Philippines.
He is trying to enter the race for the May next year election by replacing a registered contender from the Philippine Democratic Party-People’s Power, or PDP-Laban party.
Duterte is to face a real test once official campaigning begins in February next year, when the public is to demand to know who he really is, University of the Philippines political science professor Prospero de Vera said.
“On his statements about executing criminals, how will he do this without a law on capital punishment?” Vera asked.
Duterte has served more than two decades as mayor of Davao City, which was known as the nation’s murder capital during the rule of late Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos.
Under Duterte, Davao City has become one of the country’s safest and more prosperous cities. That peace and order came at a cost, according to Human Rights Watch, which has accused him of giving tacit support to the extrajudicial killings of more than 1,000 suspected criminals since the late 1990s.
Duterte calls the allegations “a myth.”
“I will not allow our children to be devoured by drugs,” Duterte told supporters in Manila last month. “I will order the military and police to kill all drug addicts in the Philippines.”
“I had a wife, a second wife and two girlfriends,” Duterte told his supporters. “You want me to become president? You need to know who I am.”
Other contenders include Mar Roxas, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III’s preferred successor, and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, a former judge who is making a third bid for the presidency.
The commissioned poll, which mentioned Duterte’s name as a possible substitute candidate, asked 1,200 voters nationwide who they would cast a ballot for if the election were held today. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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