It happened gradually to Santiago Larrauri — a nephew or niece unfriending him on Facebook, acquaintances suddenly inaccessible online. When his mother said she was disinheriting him, he thought she was probably joking, but then good friends would no longer speak to him either.
Larrauri’s crime was simple — a passionate, campaigning enthusiasm for President Duterte.
On the face of it, he does not look like an obvious supporter of the foul-mouthed, sexist populist who admits to murdering alleged drug dealers. Larrauri is an actor, novelist and independent film-maker, with middle-class artists, journalists and business people among his friends and family. But Mr Duterte’s great success has been to appeal to people across the Philippines’ wide social divides. Whatever his smart friends think, Larrauri is not alone.
Mr Duterte was elected in May with 39 per cent of the vote. Since then he has launched a bloody “war on drugs” which has killed more than 6,000 people. He has provoked angry demonstrations by allowing the body of Ferdinand Marcos, the former Philippine dictator, to be reburied in Manila’s Heroes’ Cemetery.
Like many Filipinos, Larrauri believes that the blood shed in the war on drugs is a price worth paying. “I’ve known plenty of people who got into drugs, and it affects the rest of your life,” he says. “In my neighbourhood, there were three dealers, but they’ve all run away now, and the price of shabu has gone sky high.”
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Much of Larrauri’s support for Mr Duterte stems from deep disillusionment with the established political class. As a teenager he marched in the demonstrations that forced out Marcos in 1986. Since then he has endured presidents who have each, in different ways, been a disappointment.
“When you come across a politician who does what he says, then you have to respect that guy,” he says. “Every government has its share of crooks — there’ll always be rats. But I like Duterte because he’s a cat.”
