Publish with us

Connect with us

Divining Duterte

Perspectives, Policies, Performance

Edilberto C. de Jesus
Select Preferred Format

First published as opinion pieces, the essays in Divining Duterte provide contemporaneous commentaries on the context, course and consequences of the policies Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte pursued after his 2016 election.

Duterte became the first president in seventy years to come from Mindanao and the first to vault from a city mayor’s office to Malacañang Palace. Exploiting the potential of social media, Duterte was an Asian example of the elected “populist strongman,” like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Orbal, and Russia’s Putin. His policies challenged the commitment to established political values assumed unassailable: human rights and the rule of law; separation of powers; and the preference to ally with the United States and other nations that shared its democratic liberal values rather than with authoritarian regimes. Despite these policies and problems coping with the pandemic, public opinion polls rewarded him with high approval ratings.

Restricted to a single presidential term, he will inevitably exert an influence on the 2022 elections. Duterte’s 2016 underdog victory rewrote the rules for presidential politics. In reviewing the path he took to bring the country towards 2022, Divining Duterte explores his success in overturning Philippine political values

Published: Oct/2021

ISBN: 9789814954747

Length: 334 Pages

Divining Duterte

Perspectives, Policies, Performance

Edilberto C. de Jesus

First published as opinion pieces, the essays in Divining Duterte provide contemporaneous commentaries on the context, course and consequences of the policies Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte pursued after his 2016 election.

Duterte became the first president in seventy years to come from Mindanao and the first to vault from a city mayor’s office to Malacañang Palace. Exploiting the potential of social media, Duterte was an Asian example of the elected “populist strongman,” like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Orbal, and Russia’s Putin. His policies challenged the commitment to established political values assumed unassailable: human rights and the rule of law; separation of powers; and the preference to ally with the United States and other nations that shared its democratic liberal values rather than with authoritarian regimes. Despite these policies and problems coping with the pandemic, public opinion polls rewarded him with high approval ratings.

Restricted to a single presidential term, he will inevitably exert an influence on the 2022 elections. Duterte’s 2016 underdog victory rewrote the rules for presidential politics. In reviewing the path he took to bring the country towards 2022, Divining Duterte explores his success in overturning Philippine political values

Select Preferred Format

Edilberto C. de Jesus

Edilberto C. de Jesus served as president of: Far Eastern University (1995-2002); the University of the Cordilleras (2008-2009); and the Asian Institute of Management (2009-2012), where he now holds a Professor Emeritus appointment.
In 1987, President Corazon Aquino appointed him Deputy Peace Commissioner, on secondment from AIM, where he was Chair of the Rural Development Management Program. In 1988, he received a concurrent appointment in the Cabinet as Presidential Adviser on Rural Development (1988-1992). Returning to AIM, he served as Associate Dean for Research and established its Policy Center.
He was president of the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities and a board member of the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations when he was appointed Secretary of Education (2002-2004). He was President of the Council of Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) in 2003, later serving as its Secretariat Director in Bangkok (2005-2007). He served in the Asia-Europe Education Hub established by the Asia Europe Foundation for the ASEM (Asia Europe Ministerial Meetings) and has been on the Advisory Committee of the Philippine Business for Education since its inception in 2006.
He obtained a B.A. Honors Course in the Humanities, cum laude, from the Ateneo de Manila University and the M. Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in History from Yale University. He is the author of The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines: Bureaucratic Enterprise and Social Changes, 1766-1880 (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1980) and co-edited, with Alfred McCoy, Philippine Social History: Global Trade and Local Transformations (Ateneo de Manila University, 1982).