Dirty Harry makes the Philippines’ day

The Philippines’ new leader, Rodrigo Duterte, rattled investors before his election in May by sounding like Dirty Harry. So far, however, his bark has proved worse than his bite.

Andrew Van Sickle
By
published

The Philippines' new leader, Rodrigo Duterte, rattled investors before his election in May by sounding like Donald Trump and Dirty Harry; he insisted tens of thousands of criminals would be killed in his crime crackdown. So far, however, his bark has proved worse than his bite.

There has been a spike in vigilante killings of suspected drug dealers, but Duterte has surprised observers by announcing a unilateral ceasefire with Maoist rebels, and has secured support from Muslim insurgents in the south for his planned shift towards a federal system of government.

Duterte has also "settled nerves by promising to retain the macroeconomic policies of his predecessor", avoiding cronyism in his cabinet appointments, and making a respected former minister his finance secretary, says Capital Economics. It's "an encouraging start".

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Andrew Van Sickle
Andrew Van Sickle

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.

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