Imagine a government with an average growth rate of 6 percent over the last 6 years, internal stability, quite clean performance and growing international respect. And imagine that government going to an election led by a new leader with wide experience and highly respected credentials for non-corrupt public service, and then throw in a formidable debating skill, photogenic good-looks and a well-oiled party-machine. The ‘heir apparent’.

And then try to imagine an ‘outsider’, with no national experience, carrying baggage on human-rights issues, a speaking style best described politely as ‘colourful’, and with only a limited national party-machine. 

The country is the Philippines. The election was for the role of president, in a country where this position holds the real power (in a troika of power-centers designed on the USA model). And who won? The ‘heir apparent’ of the Aquino Government, Mr Mar Roxas, or the outsider, Mr Rodrigo Duterte? Well, the outsider, Mr Duterte.

And two other contenders, each of whom had led the opinion polls at times during the campaign, Ms Poe and Mr Binay, fell into third and fourth positions as the vote counting was undertaken.
A widespread analogy being used to explain this result is that Mr Duterte is the Philippines’ Donald Trump. Mr Duterte rejects the analogy, arguing that he is no bigot. However major aspects of Mr Duterte’s electioneering have been similar to Mr Trump: Mr Duterte has argued broad themes and touched on grievances of many people in the Philippines. Mr Roxas tried to counter this by explaining the (undoubted) successes of the Aquino Government, and detailing policies. But like rallies in the USA, the audience did not want to listen to detail, and the electorate decided to concentrate on the big themes of dissatisfaction.

Those big themes were that, despite the record of solid growth, very little of the economic success has filtered down to millions of poor people. And this attitude enlarged in a wave as the electioneering progressed: the support for Duterte which initially concentrated in lower socio-economic groupings, spread into higher socio-economic categories as well.

A second theme of the election was the perception that criminality was out of control. Indeed this may explain why support for Duterte moved up the socio-economic ladder: the growth of the ‘shabu’ (Methamphetamine Hydrochloride, ‘crystal-meth’, ‘ice’) dens, and the resulting street-crimes, that have affected the lives of many in poorer areas and the ubiquitous shanties, were feared to be pushing crime into well-to-do areas. And Mr Duterte was the perfect candidate from central-casting to stop this wave of drugs and crime: with decades of experience as Mayor of Davao City in Mindanao where he cleaned up that city’s lawlessness. Big numbers of voters decided that they’d close their minds to the excesses (extra-judicial murder-squads) which allegedly accompanied the clean-up of Davao City in favour of the result achieved.
It is not that the Aquino Government has not had a policy on reducing drugs and the impact of drugs. It has a comprehensive and integrated plan, the National Anti-Drug Plan of Action (NADPA). The problem has been that this plan has not been provided with adequate funds to undertake the aims it has set. 

And this represents the big challenge for the Duterte presidency. If the Aquino Administration has run an economy at a consistent 6 percent annual growth rate - one of the highest in the world - and constantly struggles to provide big enough budgetary allocations to fund a drugs policy and provide bigger funding to improve the lives of the poorest, how will a Duterte Government achieve these goals?

The demands of the Philippines are big. There needs to be a large expansion of health, both in the form of additional hospitals and in public health initiatives. Recent figures on the number of children classified as ‘stunted’ have not improved in recent years, and ‘stunting’ is directly connected to impaired cognitive development. The Aquino Government’s landmark achievement to assist chronically poor families - the 4Ps program - gives financial assistance to 4 million families, but there are another 7 million families which should also be on this program. And there are unhoused families which are so poor that they are even under the 4Ps radar. Dengue remains rife, but this could comparatively be a picnic if Zika arrives in the Philippines. Agrarian reform remains patchy, leaving millions of hard-working people on miserably low wages. Any car journey out of the capital cities will show the large numbers of idle working-age men sitting on the road-side trying to eke a living selling cigarettes and the like. Addressing these issues will require large sums. 

Mr Duterte has said that he can save large sums by ridding the government of corruption, notably in the police force, department of taxation and customs. Sounds good, but to do so he plans to increase the wages of police and army and this will be a large impost on government expenditures.

Mr Duterte says he’ll run the economy at 7 to 8 percent and gain tax revenues this way. This is possible, but in a world where low growth is becoming the ‘new normal’ and the global economy is muted this additional growth may need to come via more attractive inward foreign investment regulations.

To push the Trump analogy to Duterte any further, it would be necessary to suggest that the dissatisfaction in the Philippines electorate is about globalization and trade. This is becoming a big theme in explaining the rise of Mr Trump and Mr Sanders. But this is not the case in the Philippines, where globalization sees 10 percent of its GDP in the form of repatriated income from the million Filipinos who now work around the world and the global out-sourcing telephone services which are now the largest employer for new graduates in the Philippines.

Rather, the Duterte win can best be explained by two themes: the failure of ‘trickle down’ economics to improve the lives of the poorest, and the failure of ‘small government’ in the neo-liberalism style to provide enough government services and outlays to allow ordinary people to feel safe.   
The election propelling Mr Duterte into power has been clean and the democratic process has been vibrant. The result was not even close: the lead achieved by Mr Duterte over the ‘heir apparent’ has been massive. There seems to be a lesson here for other democracies: even good establishment governments may not be safe against impatient voters.   

Mike B. Bradshaw has been an officer of the Treasury, Canberra, an investment banker, and a consultant in Europe, the USA and Asia. He now works on project financing.