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Friday, March 29, 2024

Influence

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There appears to be some kind of national pride that President Rodrigo Duterte is leading the online poll of TIME Magazine as of Monday. TIME 100 is a list of the most influential people in the world.

Other prominent names in the running are Pope Francis, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Duterte is ahead of all of them at 5 percent of all votes.

The list of names was released March 24; online voting is allowed until April 16. The final list will be known April 20. The magazine’s editors will choose the final list, of course, but it said it wanted to give readers some say in the matter.

Certainly it is remarkable that the President, in office for less than a year after an unexpected electoral victory, would top the online poll. How many city mayors from down South, after all, have swept into the presidency so soon after declaring their intention to govern the entire nation? Just one—this one.

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Then again, it is not clear whether the name recall that Duterte inspires is a result of worldwide appreciation of his influence, an army of online supporters, or notoriety as a result of the controversial manner in which he fights the drug menace —and in which he conducts himself.

Influence, too is a rather murky way to describe a personality especially when the basis of your information are the votes of just those who have internet access. What is influence, anyway, and how is it measured? How do you factor in the influence—or absence thereof—of the person on those who are not able to say they have been influenced, or who are not even aware that such a poll exists in the first place?

That Mr. Duterte has shot to international prominence so soon after he has taken office is an accomplishment in itself. Other leaders come and go, and millions from other parts of the world hardly know their names.

It is foolhardy, however, to fall into the trap that this popularity contest validates the quality of how a person conducts himself in the field he is in. In Mr. Duterte’s case, it is too soon to tell whether everything he is doing affects us all in the way we envisioned his brand of change would.

Trumping all others is no reason to gloat. It must instead prompt one to evaluate whether the dent he is making is as good and as profound as that of the rest of the names on the list. The best, most effective personalities are not always the loudest or the most popular.

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