President Duterte has often been compared to US President Donald Trump. Both began their ascent to power as provocative political outsiders who tapped into the aspirations of a class of voters that felt alienated by traditional politicians. Each played to his own base, often by pandering to their basest tendencies. Mr. Duterte appealed to the common tao by shocking us with his profanity, threats of violence and sexist remarks; Mr. Trump stoked the flames of racial divisions in his own country, once describing people who marched in a Ku Klux Klan parade as “good people.” He too, like Duterte, would betray a sexist attitude that demeaned women, particularly those who opposed him.
Both, too, have had unfulfilled promises. Mr. Trump said he would build a great border wall and make Mexico pay for it. Near the end of his four-year term, his administration has built only five miles of wall where no barriers previously existed. The rest—about 300 miles—were replacement or secondary to existing wall, and Mexico did not pay for any of it.
Both presidents also have spoken in glowing terms about dictators—Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, both of whom have maneuvered their way into becoming presidents for life in their respective countries.
To nobody’s surprise, both presidents have had good things to say about each other. In February, before the Trump administration had botched the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Duterte said his US counterpart was “a good president and deserved to be re-elected” this November. Trump, on the other hand, has been known to tout his “very good” relationship with Mr. Duterte—who before he was elected described Trump as a bigot.
There are other similarities, of course. While both presidents claim to have a huge following, neither can honestly claim to be majority leaders. Mr. Duterte won the presidency in 2016 with 39 percent of the vote, a plurality, not a majority, while Mr. Trump actually lost the popular election by 3 million votes but still won by virtue of the mysterious American institution called the Electoral College.
Now another similarity has emerged.
Both presidents, it appears, are not shy about using their absolute power of executive clemency. Mr. Trump has used that power to commute the sentence of his friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of seven felony crimes, including threatening a witness. In fact, Mr. Trump has granted executive clemency to 25 people charged or convicted of federal crimes, most of them well-connected people.
Taking a page from Trump, Mr. Duterte has now pardoned an American soldier, Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton, who was found guilty of killing a 26-year-old Filipino transgender woman, Jennifer Laude, whose body was found naked in a motel room, with her head inside a toilet bowl.
In pardoning Pemberton, Mr. Duterte short circuited the legal process by which his early release for good behavior was being challenged by the Laude family, and even his own Justice department.
Justifying his decision, Duterte said only that Pemberton had not been treated fairly, and that he had no power over where he was detained—in an air conditioned detention facility in Camp Aquinaldo, instead of a regular jail. He does not address the issue of fairness on the other side, however. Are the five years Pemberton served in his air conditioned cell enough to fulfill the demands of justice of the Laude family and the Filipino people?
Although he has not uttered the words made famous by Mr. Trump who used them to describe the deaths of more than 150,000 Americans due to COVID-19, we can almost imagine Mr. Duterte shrugging his shoulders at the anger and hurt of the Laude family and saying: “It is what it is.”
