Gideon Rachman argues in his book that we have entered the age of the strongman and we can expect it to continue for acouple more decades (The Age of the Strongman[2022]). Although Rachman does not offer a formal definition of “strongman”, the reader gets the idea: it is agovernment ruler who concentrates the power of the state in his person—or tries to—to the detriment of the rule of law; he also claims to embody the people. The book’s subtitle,How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World,emphasizes the cult of personality that is built around strongmen. We Filipinos are living in this age of the Strongman.

Rachman regards Vladimir Putin as “the archetype and model for the current generation of strongman leaders.” The strongman phenomenon gradually gathered momentum, he writes, as Putin was followed by Turkey’s Recep Erdo?an in 2003, China’s Xi Jinping in 2012, India’s Narendra Modi in 2014, Boris Johnson’s championing of Brexit, Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, the election of Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, and others.

The strongman era is based on personality-driven politics. An aggressive social media campaign, relying on speed of diffusion of information, frames the narrative that the country is facing a catastrophe and it needs a strongman to save it through swift, bold and unorthodox decisions that cast aside political niceties. This champion of the people populist style appeals to the common sense of ordinary voters with Grade 5cognitive abilities. Toughness (if not cruelty) is an important part of the propagated image. But in reality, strongmen are either liars or ignoramuses or both.

Duterte had experimented extensively with violence during his 22 years as mayor of Davao. His squad of police officers operated on ‘watch lists’ based on intelligence reports that carry no weight in courts and engaged inacts of extrajudicial killing (Miller, 2018, p. 266). Duterte ran for the presidency unapologetic about his record and even bragged to replicate his violent success story—‘It will be bloody’, he held at one point, and ‘God will cry’ at another. In office, his ‘war on drugs’ gave the police latitude as cadavers of drug peddlers and drug addicts were left on the streets as a demonstration of what McCoy (2017) calls as ‘performative violence’ and resonated a lurid political message: Duterte is all-mighty and above the law. In total, more people died at the hands of police officers or vigilantes enjoying official impunity than during the years of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. or during the ‘troubles’ of Northern Ireland (Miller, 2018, p. 17).

Strongmen believe that they need to break the rules to get things done, especially since the system is perceived to be weedy and just takes forever to accomplish anything. For the strongman, the world is not complex as he suffers from simplism – like “operation tokhang.” Strongman leaders can also be conspiracy theorists, with business oligarchs and communist insurgents often identified as arch nemesis of the State.

Support for strongman leaders comes from a variety of sources, depending on the country. Butuyan (2023) explained that democracy disillusioned voters made an about-face away from a democratic leader in 2016 because the perennial problems of poverty, crime and corruption have not been eradicated for three decades since 1986.

Rachman concludes that the strongman is a flawed model because of the over concentration of power and the difficulty of changing leaders in non-democratic systems – and sometimes even in democratic countries – if something goes wrong. Indeed, the longer strongmen stay in power, the more likely they are to become a megalomaniac or to make some appalling error. One reason that strong men hold on desperately to power is that they fear being out of power, which can often mean either assassination or jail.

They can thus do much damage to democratic institutions, such as through electoral interference, human rights abuses, and restrictions on freedom of speech. And when they have a firm grip on key political institutions – notably the military, the police, the judiciary and the legislature – and have elites in their pocket through corrupt patronage, strongmen are very difficult to dislodge.

Butuyan( Dec. 21,2023) asserted that strongmen leaders were merely good with sound bites,theatrics, and cosmetic solutions, and failed to push for genuine solutions that would really improve people’s lives. They do not do better and, in fact, have even worse records in solving the core problems of poverty, crime and corruption.

In short, strongmen are more dangerous and flawed than democracies despite their naive appeal.

As we face 2024 full of hope of overcoming the economic challenges ahead, we should brace for the consequences of this democratic recession which will last until the age of the strongman comes to an end.

Photo: Rody Duterte FB