The Realm of the Punisher: Travels in Duterte's Philippines

Backed up by a sound historical understanding of how the world works, this is a highly personal and informed insight into a misunderstood area of the world - informative in so many ways, and always engaging.

I found this book to be a fascinating examination of a subject and country which receives little international attention. In it, Tom Sykes; who has lived and worked in the Philippines, provides excellent analysis of the rise to power of Rodrigo Duterte, the controversial current president of this SE Asian archipelago nation. Since his election in 2016, Duterte’s regime has embarked on a vicious drugs war in which tens of thousands of Filipinos have died.This brutal campaign, along with Duterte’s popularity among ordinary impoverished Filipinos makes for some intriguing reading. Through a series of candid interviews and often humourous first-hand accounts of his time there, the author unravels the reasons underpinning these developments in an insightful and engaging way. In short Syke’s has produced an impressive piece of work which brings clarity to the murky world of Filipino politics. Well written, excellently researched and thoroughly enjoyable, I’d highly recommend this book even if you know little or nothing about the Philippines.

Tom Sykes, who has spent over 15 years travelling to and from the Philippines, is well qualified to write this illuminating book. Sykes’s interest in the Philippines began as a child when he listened to his Grandads’s exotic wartime tales of this little known country. In later life Sykes was commissioned by a glossy travel magazine to write about the Philippines. But when the chips were down he felt this was a betrayal. He didn’t want to write about kite-surfing and beaches.The Philippines doesn’t have a particularly positive image in the West. But ‘Sex tourism and child molestation are not the only things that happens in the Philippines,’ says Sykes. The country is also frequently hit by devastating typhoons.The past is never far away. Historically the Philippines have been a political football. ‘The Spanish Empire was so degenerate that it had to be usurped by a kinder, gentler power such as …the US.’More recently the Philippines haven’t had much luck with their Presidents. As Sykes visits the embalmed body of Ferdinand Marcos his guide asks if he would like to give the President a wave. Sykes demures. ‘I didn’t give him a little wave. That would have felt too silly.’Aside from providing wonderfully graphic street-side descriptions, Sykes has, over the years, watched Duterte’s inexorable rise and endeavours to understand how Rodrigo ‘The Punisher’ Duterte has come to power. Duterte is waging a drugs war so brutal that it has so far seen the death of over 10,000 people.According to one psychiatrist Duterte exhibits Anti Social Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (Sound familiar?) Sykes wonders how to explain the contradiction of Duterte’s self described socialism and his bully-boy tactics. One quasi-Freudian pundit explains: ‘The populace wants a powerful father figure. They crave someone to tell them off, to spank them… In return they receive security.’Although, at the last minute, Sykes’s interview with Duterte is cancelled he does feel the breath of the president’s henchmen on his back. His guides are frequently nervous and official visits are carefully stage managed.Sykes goes where most travel writers don’t dare. He asks awkward questions – sometimes at the risk of his own well being. There is more than a touch of the Hunter S Thompson to his adventures. In his search for the real country, Sykes visits gigantic themed shopping malls, has panic attacks, gets drunk in bars and hangs out with posh kids, gangsters and street workers. And despite the horror stories Sykes leaves on a positive note. ‘Manila has plenty of brave, selfless activists devoted to the downtrodden, no matter the odds heaped against them.’Sykes is an entertaining and illuminating writer. As well as serious analysis there are laugh out loud moments. I’d recommend The Realm of the Punisher to anyone who wants to understand what is going on in the world today.

Read this not knowing a thing about the Philippines, and not planning to visit. I was expecting to last a few chapters, but it's written in such a way that it's engaging and relevant and very readable.

The Realm of the PunisherTom SykesSignal BooksAs someone who has grown up with a distinct guilty conscience about avoiding this genre since I was fifteen, I turned to page one with a degree of psychological trepidation and a somewhat large monkey on my back. By page two my anxiety had evaporated and the monkey had gone to search for another shoulder.The reason is very straightforward – ‘The Realm of Punisher’ is quite simply a fabulous read.This book is not only a great read for, well obviously, the reader; it is also a great read for any aspiring writer. Tom Sykes writes with the paradoxical ease of having the reader right there next to him, as he jokes and comments about the awfulness of the Manila traffic. Of course it sounds and reads as a very easy thing to do – but it most patently is not. And of course, if you are right there – this turns out to be one hell of a cheap holiday. And that is essentially what this is. True, Sykes is in the Philippines doing a serious investigative journalistic piece. But Sykes as writer is about total experience – how does the sum total of this place – the geography, the history, the urban rural divide, the economics, the social fabric, the individuals, the politics, the eventual President – how does it all come together? The answer to that is that he never once gives a personal view of what he sees, apart from maybe some self-censure at being foolish enough to talk to some young adults in the most dangerous place probably in the world; ‘You could be asked to drink some local liquor in a competition’. ‘Bring it on, [Tom] said, ‘I’m from Portsmouth’. But that in many respects is why this is such a masterpiece; it becomes clear that Tom is happy to talk to absolutely anybody, and to give a voice to anyone who has something to say about their country.There is also abundance here. Tom is an extremely self-effacing and laid back traveller and consequently there is bound to be an abundance of humour. Indeed, pretty much the whole of chapter 3 ‘How to Write’ is a scream. Tom then considers his rationale for being in the Country; “Deirdre Wong…offered me the role of the magazine’s ‘ Englishman in Manila’ correspondent. So here I was now, indescribably fortunate to at last be in the Philippines and getting paid to write about it. The problem was I didn’t know how to write about it.” He tries sarcastically demolishing a guidebook resume of the Philippines, in itself hugely funny, but he knows it will not do. Then he goes into a tailspin of thinking about every experience he has had since he got off the plane. He then decides that it must be writer’s block. He then gets a text from Deirdre. ‘Tom…how are you progressing with the article?’ Tom replies, ‘I should have it with you by tomorrow.’ We imagine that he must get right down to it there and then. ‘But I didn’t do that. I went to the pub’.There is an abundance of compassion. The chapter ‘Autogeddon’ details the sad story of Leopoldo, an alcoholic who is Tom’s personal driver. Notice the clear conflict of interest there. After nearly killing him, Tom gets Leopoldo to park up, and takes him to the nearest medical centre, where he even pays the medical bills.There is also an abundance of life in the Philippines; from smells, food, children playing, smiles, laughter, and of course interspersed with a serious side. Given the title of the book, Duterte is always hauntingly hovering in the background – and a lot of the book is precisely how the Filippinos view him, from intellectuals, writers, politicians, drivers, waiters, children, artists, farmers indeed, anyone who wishes to offer a view is given space to do so. The Realm of the Punisher is essentially a comic-tragedy of how a people so full of love and life, can so consistently want to be ruled by sociopaths and psychopaths. And there is of course a profoundly serious political issue to this book. That some candidates to high office may seem on the face of it, sensible; they espouse issues of law and order, family values and justice. But behind those seemingly fine sentiments lie the path to facism. It happened in 1939, and it is happening again today with Trump labelling immigration as 'infestation' and of course Duterte - 'Hitler killed 3 million Jews. Now, we have 3 million drug addicts - I would be happy to slaughter them.' The question is, how far the Filippinos will let him continue down this hateful path. He is already extending martial law from the south, and it is this question of resilience and opposition that Sykes tries to uncover. This is a very endearing glimpse into a fabulously colourful place where, even though scourge of facism steals through its very fabric, and although citizens are being murdered by official death squads, it is still an absolutely amazing country; rich in history and alive with cultural beauty. Are we seeing the rise of a despicable Nazi style populism growing before our very eyes? If you buy just one book in 2019, this one will keep you thinking for the rest of the year. Oh, and when I was 15, I received the school geography prize, ‘the Cloud Forest’. There were no pictures in it, so I never read it. Must go look in the attic.Paul Valentine