Politics is spreading covid-19 in Indonesia and the Philippines

IN THE FACE of covid-19, world leaders have fallen into four camps. The first group denies there is a problem: think of Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan, who fined his subjects for wearing face masks before ordering everyone to don them as a protection against “dust”. The second group recognises the threat and counters it with maximum coercion, regardless of civil liberties: think of Xi Jinping in China. The third group, which includes most democracies, handles the tricky trade-off between crushing the virus and crushing everything that is enjoyable in life reasonably well. The fourth group tries to act tough, but does so incompetently. Here, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and President Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, of Indonesia stand out. Their two archipelagic countries have fared far worse than the rest of South-East Asia, with around 200,000 and 160,000 known coronavirus cases respectively and still rising fast.

Mr Duterte is coarse, Jokowi soft-spoken: the two seem cut from different cloth. Yet both were mayors who won national power because voters saw in them something new. They were not from the usual dynasties that dominate their countries’ politics, nor did they spout the geekspeak of global elitists. As mayors they got stuff done: in Mr Duterte’s case, “fighting crime” in Davao by encouraging vigilantes to...