The Trump of the Philippines Leads Polls Before Presidential Election

It is pretty amazing how much similarity there is between Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump.  It will be interesting to see if he does get elected if he can reduce crime and corruption in the Philippines like he claims he will do:

On the eve of the final day of campaigning, President Benigno Aquino III made a desperate call on candidates to agree to an alliance to defeat the brash Duterte, who has been likened to U.S. Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump for his controversial remarks but has topped election polls.

Duterte’s lead in the polls can be overcome if his trailing rivals — mainly Roxas and Poe — join hands, Aquino said, implying that some of them should back out and support a single aspirant.

Under the Philippine electoral system, a candidate who gets the most votes is proclaimed the winner, even if no one gets a majority. (……….)

A longtime mayor of southern Davao city, Duterte, 71, courted controversy with his profanity-laden speeches, vulgar jokes and devil-may-care irreverence, but has successfully tapped into public insecurities with a bold promise to wipe out crime and corruption in three to six months if he is elected.

The national police chief has doubted that campaign promise. Police have issued statistics showing Davao city, where Duterte has served as mayor for more than 22 years, placed fourth among 15 major Philippine cities with the highest number of crimes from 2010 to 2015.

“I thought he was like Batman and Superman combined,” Aquino said sarcastically of Duterte’s anti-crime pledge.

Aquino, business executives and church leaders felt that Duterte crossed the line when he joked about wanting to have been the first to rape an Australian missionary who was gang-raped and brutally killed by inmates in a 1989 jail riot.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.