Manila – Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte has widened his lead over rivals despite remarks about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary which sparked protests from diplomats, the Catholic church and women’s groups.

Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, emerged as the “clear frontrunner” in a survey which research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) released Monday.

The candidate, who has promised mass killings of suspected criminals, saw his support rise from 27 per cent of respondents in March to 33 per cent in April, giving him a nine-point lead over second-placed Senator Grace Poe just two weeks before the vote.

The survey was conducted from April 18-20, shortly after a video circulated showing Duterte making the remark about the missionary in a campaign hustings event.

Duterte, 71, had told laughing followers that the woman was so beautiful he wished he had been the first in line to rape her – before she was murdered in a jail riot in his city in 1989.

SWS spokesman Leo Laroza said the apparent joke may have dented Duterte’s popularity but did not stop him pulling ahead of his arrivals in the poll of 1,800 voters.

“Mayor Duterte has been steadily gaining ground. It’s a clear lead. The joke could have affected him in such a way that his score could have even been higher had it not been for that news,” he told AFP.

Francisco Magno, president of the Philippine Political Science Association, said the latest figures showed a substantial voting bloc was attracted to “strong man leadership”.

It showed marked sympathy for his “one-issue campaign effort” against crime and illegal drugs, he added.

The survey also indicated that issues like women’s rights and human rights in general were secondary for many.

“There is much to be desired about the quality of political education” in the country, Magno told AFP.

He said Duterte also benefited from having three rivals splitting the vote.

If the anti-Duterte forces were eventually to unite behind one of them, that might determine the election result, said Magno.

Current President Benigno Aquino, the son of a former president, is constitutionally limited to a single six-year term. His preferred successor Mar Roxas – the grandson of a former president – trails badly in surveys.

Despite dramatic economic growth under Aquino, analysts say Duterte’s appeal stems from popular disenchantment with the political elite in a nation where one in four still lives in poverty.

“Duterte’s rise mirrors the revolt of the periphery,” sociologist Randy David wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Sunday.

“It is difficult to see how, under a Duterte presidency, the country can avoid entering another period of political uncertainty.” Women’s rights advocate Ana Maria Nemenzo said Duterte’s ranking in the latest survey reflected poorly on Philippine culture.

“The culture of rape is very much prevalent, it is deep-seated in our machismo system. You can see the men seem to lap up this kind of talk,” she told AFP.

Nemenzo, head of WomanHealth Philippines, said that despite two female presidents in the past, the reaction to Duterte’s “debasing” remarks showed the country still had far to go.

“If Duterte wins, it’s going to be a tragedy, not only for the women’s movement but for our country,” she added.

Duterte’s rape comments drew widespread condemnation including from the Australian and American ambassadors, while women’s groups filed a complaint to the human rights commission.

But Duterte was undaunted, telling the diplomats to “shut their mouths” and warning he was prepared to sever ties with Canberra and Washington over the affair.

Another survey of 4,000 voters nationwide, taken by research group Pulse Asia before the remarks hit the headlines, also put Duterte in the lead with 34 per cent ahead of Poe at just 22 per cent.

Human rights groups have accused Duterte of leading vigilante death squads that have carried out over a thousand killings in Davao – allegations he has boasted about.

If elected, he said, he would kill 100,000 criminals and dump so many in Manila Bay that the “fish will grow fat” from feeding on them.

In an election debate Sunday, he even vowed to kill his own children if they ever took drugs.

TOKYO – Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, speaking ahead of a visit to Beijing, said on Monday that China was making the world “worried” with its military buildup and maritime expansion in the East and South China Seas.

Ties between China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, have long been plagued by a territorial dispute, regional rivalry and the legacy of Japan’s World War Two aggression.

China and Japan dispute sovereignty over a group of uninhabited East China Sea islets, while in the South China Sea, Beijing is building islands on reefs to bolster its claims.

China has rattled nerves with its military and construction activities on the islands in the South China Sea, including building runways, though Beijing says most of what it is building is for civilian purposes, like lighthouses.

“Candidly speaking, a rapid and opaque increase in (China’s) military spending and unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas under the aim of building a strong maritime state are having not only people in Japan, but countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the international community worried greatly,” Kishida said in a speech to business leaders.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about US$5 trillion (S$6.8 trillion) in trade is shipped every year.

Kishida plans to visit China as early as Japan’s “Golden Week” extended holiday, which starts on Friday. “Through candid dialogue with the Chinese side, I want to get the wheel turning to create the Sino-Japanese relations that are suitable for a new age,” he said.

Taiwan president visits disputed Taiping island in Spratly archipelago at South China Sea

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Reuters, AFP, Digital Globe

Potholes are enough to send motorists scuttling away or rile them if they have to cough up a lot to repair their vehicle after getting stuck in one.

What if the killer depressions are many times bigger? Say a prayer and run for your life as fast as you could.

One sharp-eyed traffic officer spotting a menacing crack at a busy intersection in Hangzhou city in China recently, saved the lives of motorists and prevented their vehicles from being damaged.

A closed-circuit TV which captured the whole incident, shows the quick-thinking man diverting traffic as he placed plastic cones to cordon off the area.

Posted by China’s Central TV station, the video clip shows that he was able to have a conservative estimate of the perimeter of possible damage and placed the indicators beyond the danger area,

Two minutes later, a small section collapsed from a fault line, followed soon after by a larger area around it.

The hole was big enough to swallow up a small bus.

Related: Massive sinkhole swallows a bus

One British motorist wasn’t so lucky in February when her car was sucked into a sinkhole. Sally Hall was trying to drive through an overflowing drain in Nottinghamshire when she got stuck, reported the BBC.

She was forced to climb to safety as water rushed in and flooded her car, dragging it deeper into the hole.

In March, a sinkhole didn’t pose a threat to the life of a Chinese fish farmer in Guangxi province but he had to count his losses after it swallowed some 25 tons of his fish, reported Chinese news portal Sina.

The hole was between 4 and 5m in diameter and some locals blamed the disaster on the work of a nearby rock quarry.

Also, last month, some Florida residents were forced to flee their caravans after a large sinkhole appeared near a mobile home park in Tarpon Springs.

Sinkhole repairs can cost much more than an arm and a leg.

A large crater that appeared in a B&B car park in north Staffordshire in Britain was fixed at a staggering cost of more than ￡2m (about S$4 million), reported the BBC.

chenj@sph.com.sg

Read also: Man and woman fall into sinkhole in a train station

Video captures sinkhole collapsing in middle of busy road

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China Central TV Station