He revels in his reputation as a crime-fighting mayor, has praised the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and brags about his womanising ways at the age of 70.
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And Rodrigo Duterte also this week emerged as a leading contender for thePhilippine presidency after announcing his run for the top job in next year’s elections.
Mr Duterte has been elected seven times as mayor of Davao in the southern Philippines as he has overseen the city’s transformation from the country’s most dangerous metropolis to one of the world’s safest.
He has pledged to combat crime gangs across the country with the same strongman ruthlessness if he wins the presidency of a country with the region’s highest violent crime rates.
“You’ll see a lot of fat fish in Manila Bay,” he predicted of his administration’s approach to tackling crime. And he added a direct warning for criminals: “If I become president, hide.”
Mr Duterte basks in the nickname “Duterte Harry”, a variant of the detective character “Dirty Harry” played by Clint Eastwood in the action thriller. Others simply call him “the Punisher”.
Groups such as Human Rights Watch have charged that death squads have summarily killed 1,000 alleged criminals during his time as mayor of Davao. Mr Duterte has cultivated his no-prisoners reputation, while denying connections to the vigilante gangs.
“The best practices in the city are the killings (of criminals),” he once recounted telling a former president. On another occassion, he told criminals that they had two choices about how they left Davao - vertically or horizontally.
And as he entered the fray in the region’s most rambunctious democracy, his presidential prospects appeared to receive a major boost on Tuesday night.
File photo: Rodrigo Duterte Photo: EPA
For a state election commission ruled that Grace Poe, the current frontrunner, was not eligible to compete. Ms Poe, a senator, is the adopted daughter of film stars who at one stage relinquished her citizenship when she lived in the US and gained an American passport.
The agency disqualified her because, as an abandoned foundling, she could not prove that she was, as required, a “natural-born Filipina” and that she had not lived in the country long enough to run for office after returning from the US.
The glamorous politician insisted that she would appeal against rulings which were not delivered by highest election authority.
But Ms Poe’s woes and Mr Duterte’s candidacy have shaken up an already open field. Jejomar Binay, the vice president, and Manuel Roxas, the grandson of a former president, are the other major contenders, with many other candidates also running.
Mr Duterte also has the backing of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son of the namesake late dictator and Imelda Marcos, and who is himself running for vice-president.
File photo: Rodrigo Duterte is officially declared as the presidential candidate of the PDP-Laban political party at a hotel in Manila, Philippines Photo: Getty Images
And the Davao mayor is not simply relying on his crime-busting credentials to solicit support. He also bragged this weekend in an obscenity-laced speech to 10,000 supporters that he had two wives – without clarifying their legal status - and also two girlfriends.
“If you want me to become your President, you should know everything about me,” he explained.
“Many are asking what my credentials are and what I can do for the Philippines. They are telling me that they heard I am a womaniser. That is true. That is very true.
His comments elicited whoops of approval from the audience, as did his behaviour at the rally, approaching attractive women in the crowds, and posing for photographs with female admirers perched in his lap.
After first discussing his “two wives” – one in the Philippines, one in the US – he continued: “I also have two girlfriends. One is working as a cashier and the other works for a cosmetics store at a mall. The one working at the cosmetics store is younger. The other one is older but more beautiful.”
But the mayor was keen to make clear that, unlike some politicians, he does not use public funds to support his paramours.
“I do not let them live in posh condominium units,” he said. “They just stay in boarding houses worth 1,500 pesos (£21) a month.”
But Mr Duterte’s loose mouth may also have endangered his campaign after he was quoted as cursing Pope Francis – a high-risk strategy in a devoutly Roman Catholic country – for traffic delays caused during the pontiff’s visit in January.
The mayor initially insisted that he had been misunderstood while apologising for any offence. But then he returned to the tactics that he knows best, as a political fighter, seeking to switch focus by claiming that he was sexually abused by a priest as a child.
The country’s powerful clergy was not impressed however. "Vulgarity is corruption,” said Archbishop Socrates Villegas. “When we find vulgarity funny, we have really become beastly and barbaric as a people.
“When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laugh, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame. My countrymen have gone to the dregs.”
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