If there’s one thing just about everyone trusts in the Philippines, it’s the Southeast Asian country’s own opinion polling service Social Weather Stations. So the presidential office took note when the Metro Manila-based organization found in the third quarter of 2017 that rough-hewn, tough-talking and once irrevocably popular Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s satisfaction rating had sunk from 78% to 67%. Duterte himself didn’t get flaming mad like last year over criticism from foreign governments that disputed a key reason for his popularity: extrajudicial killings in a stepped-up campaign against illegal drugs. The president’s trust rating also dropped from 82% to 73% in September, the polling organization said.
Duterte will probably survive the popularity plunge. Like all Philippine presidents, he can serve only a single six-year term. He has until 2022 to raise the ratings again. The 72-year-old former mayor has three options, most notably the skilled handling of his country’s new friend China.
1. Duterte can just wait.
The presidential office cites a cyclical downturn as the cause for fallen popularity. On Monday presidential office spokesman Ernesto Abella called the drop “expected given the fact that people start measuring their expectations usually after the honeymoon period, or after a year in office.”
That argument has some merit if you look at previous administrations. Social Weather Stations likens Duterte’s drop in approval to the same faced by the five previous Philippine presidents, from the most recent and overall popular Benigno Aquino to the notoriously corrupt Joseph Estrada from 1998 to 2001. They all saw a boost in support shortly after taking office followed by a temporary slide a year or so into their terms.
2. He can play up popular items on his campaign agenda.
Fighting drugs is just the part of Duterte’s agenda that makes him most famous overseas. The campaign that has killed an estimated 7,000 people has widespread support among urban Filipinos who feel their neighborhoods are safer. But police-linked slayings of three teenagers in August and September, in the name of busting drug crimes, cut into that support. Duterte pledged last year to rid drugs in six months.
If that’s the reason for Duterte's popularity drop, the president can start playing up other campaign promises with little risk. He had pledged to end corruption, always an issue in the Philippines, for example. Perhaps as a sign of shifting priorities, Duterte on Thursday reportedly pulled the national police off his anti-drug campaign and handed that job to a drug enforcement agency with sights on peddling networks rather than people in the streets.
The president will “continue to work harder to deliver the president’s campaign promises of eliminating corruption, drugs and criminality and bringing a comfortable life for all,” Abella said Monday.
3. Duterte can form a China policy without isolating America.
Duterte has made a splash abroad not only for killing drug peddlers without trial but also for shaking off seven decades of lopsided dependence on his country’s former colonizer the United States in favor of befriending a previously untested, untrusted China.
People’s trust in China has grown accordingly as Beijing’s pledge last year of $24 billion in aid and investment begins to materialize, giving the president room to pursue a stronger friendship. Some of the pledges will probably fund new railway lines. China donated 3,000 assault rifles this month for the fight against armed Muslim rebels on the long troubled island of Mindanao.
People’s trust in China grew 17 percentage points from 2014 to 2017, a Pew Research Center study found in September. Still, minority legislators, military officials and much of the public still worry about the giant Asian power because despite warming relations it is still pressuring the Philippines over contested claims around the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands. China happens to have a much stronger military.
“The South China Sea and the China policy are still one of the low points of the administration on foreign policy,” says Jay Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines.
The answer? Like both China and the United States.
Duterte’s Foreign Secretary Peter Cayetano said last month the country wanted to reconnect with the United States, especially economically, after the president's harsh language and calls for Washington to leave chilled relations last year. The U.S. government had questioned the deadly anti-drug effort and withheld aid as Duterte grew angry. Yet all along, Filipinos still felt more kindred toward the United States than toward China, per surveys and chats with common people.
“A balanced foreign policy will be a really good strategy of course for our country,” says Dexter Feliciano, a Filipino voter and founder of a startup firm in Manila. “We don’t depend only on the U.S. Aid given by the U.S. has strings attached. We need to have a fallback partner.”
