I was a little perturbed to see both of you mentioning Duterte's rise to power as if this was a move in the direction of good governance. 

The man is a complete maverick. He is a populist who has been compared to Donald Trump, but he sounds much more dangerous.  His main claim to fame is ridding his city Davao from crime, which was done by supporting death squads. He has said that he will kill 100,000 criminals.  He made fun of the rape of an American missionary in a prison by saying she was so beautiful that he should have been first in line to rape her.

Nobody has any real clue about what he will do in office.  He probably doesn't know himself.  Here is the best article I have been able to find about that.

 

Eoin Treacy's view

Thank you for sharing your view and here is a link to an article from the Sydney Morning Herald referring to the episode when Duterte made a wholly inappropriate comment on the rape and murder of an Australian missionary during a prison riot in 1989. He also claims to have been the person to fire the first shot during the subsequent storming on the prison where a significant number of the perpetrators were killed. 

I agree that the rise in populist nationalism is a worrying trend not only in the Philippines but in Europe and the USA as well. The Philippines faces a number of issues, not least low standards of governance and commodity prices which have, until recently, been trending lower. Weak global economic growth and low oil prices will also have had a negative effect on remittances. Therefore a change of leadership which purports to clamp down on crime, promote public decency, tackle bureaucratic ineptitude and foster opportunity for the nation’s emerging middle class is worth giving the benefit of the doubt to until we have evidence it is not delivering on those lofty aims. 

The fact is he has some serious challenges in front of him where brokering a ceasefire with insurgents is a top priority. So far he was been reasonably balanced in his appointments to cabinet posts and has been moderate in his comments regarding China. 

The stock market Index continues to pull away from the region of the trend mean, having broken the yearlong progression of lower rally highs. A sustained move below 7000 would be required to question potential for additional upside.