The power behind Duterte

Pro-poor agenda: Children posing next to a Duterte campaign poster at an informal settler area in Davao City. — AFP

MANILA: The answers to how the unconventional campaign of Rodrigo Duterte was able to soundly defeat the supposedly tried and tested formulas of his rivals could be as elusive as the man who is being credited by his grassroots workers with Duterte’s victory – former rebel priest Leoncio Evasco.

But while Evasco has successfully evaded packs of reporters hungry for answers to how he did it, one of his leaders on the ground in the Mindanao campaign has given Inquirer a glimpse of what made the Duterte campaign click.