What’s wrong with Southeast Asia?

But in the cradle of the non-violent revolutions, things are going backwards. Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, is a self-proclaimed murderer who boasts about how many people his death squads kill.

Rodrigo Duterte, or 'Duterte Harry' (as he is called in homage to Clint Eastwood’s film portrayal of lawless cop Dirty Harry) was elected to the presidency with a massive majority last year, and he is still hugely popular with ordinary Filipinos. But this is not democracy; it is populist demagoguery of the most extreme kind.Photogaph courtesy of Commons Wikipedia

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

March 27, 2017

LONDON, ENGLAND—Thirty years ago, most of Southeast Asia was run by thuggish dictatorships. Then the Philippines showed the rest of the world how to get rid of the dictators without violence, and its non-violent example was watched and copied around the world. But now the thugs are coming back whe...

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