Can Duterte still be saved?

The downward trail

Presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte was riding high on his seemingly unstoppable popularity bandwagon when, without any warning or premonition, he suddenly went careening downhill, and his entire world seemed to tumble upside down. The slip looked like no more than a “banana peel,” but it seemed a perfect demonstration of Murphy’s law, “if anything can go wrong, it will.” Its conse­quences seemed global. Observers are still waiting to see what Duterte will do to recover from this fall.