Duterte’s promise of metamorphosis

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s vow to “metamorphose from a caterpillar into a butterfly,” when he assumes the presidency on June 30, has relieved some critics of their anxieties and reassured his voters that he has not become a latter-day version of England’s King George III or Ecuador’s President Abdala Jaime Bucaran Ortiz, popularly known as “El Loco,” who was ousted for mental incapacity after only a year in office.

For Duterte, the perceptible enthusiasm about his promised “metamorphosis” is a propaganda coup. The alluring image of a “butterfly” is fortuitously enhanced upon the passing of the great Muhammad Ali, the legendary world boxing champion who danced in the ring, promising to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”