WHEN Filipinos attempt to explain the political success of their tough-guy president, Rodrigo Duterte, they tend to point to local precursors. Joseph Estrada, a former matinée idol who had often played Robin Hood types, rose to the presidency by promising to be hard on bad guys and good to the poor. And then there is Ferdinand Marcos, who cultivated an image as a war hero to win election before assuming dictatorial powers, and whose reputation Mr Duterte is doing his best to restore.

Both these comparisons make Mr Duterte’s knack of casting himself as a friend of the people while giving short shrift to the niceties of democracy seem like a function of Philippine politics, in which populists occasionally attempt to stir up resentment against the hereditary caste of landowners who dominate government and the economy. After all, despite regular elections and much talk of reform, the 40 best-connected families still control about three-quarters of the Philippines’ wealth. Poverty is equally entrenched, as a visit to Manila’s slums or the southern, partly Muslim island of Mindanao makes clear.

But the Philippines is not the only country in South-East Asia with an entrenched establishment presiding over profound inequality. Most are blighted by single-party rule, or by a political churn which does not seem to have much impact on local power structures. Thailand, with a monarchy manipulated by the elites, is a case in point. The purpose of 12 military coups, two in the past 12 years, has been, as Michael Vatikiotis argues in “Blood and Silk”, a perceptive new book on the region, to maintain “an imposing if arcane edifice of power and [cultivate] a conservative mindset that has prevented the devolution of power and autonomy to ordinary people.”

Indeed, Mr Duterte may have more in common with Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister of Thailand now living in self-imposed exile, than with any Filipino predecessor, for all that Mr Duterte is foul-mouthed and scruffy where Mr Thaksin is silver-tongued and bespoke. Mr Thaksin swept to power in 2001 by identifying himself with the underdog, particularly the rural poor in the country’s north and north-east, his political base. To the alarm of the establishment, which ousted him in 2006 (it did the same eight years later to his sister after she was elected by a landslide), Mr Thaksin appeared keen to supplant the monarchy in the people’s favours. Though Mr Duterte, whose power base is in Davao city in Mindanao, is not challenging a system as cosmic as the Thai monarchy, he has openly confronted the landed and political elites. He rails at the “feudal state” and “imperial” Manila. Even before he was elected, the talk at glitzy dinner parties was of how to depose him.

Both men claim to speak for the poor. Mr Duterte lambasts the Catholic church as being “full of shit” for supposedly caring more about what it receives from the rich than what it does for the less fortunate. Both have been drawn to leftists. When Mr Thaksin was a police officer in the northern city of Chiang Mai, he got to know survivors of the army’s massacre of students in Bangkok in 1976; they had fled to join a communist insurgency in the northern hills. Some became senior advisers as he rose to power. Similarly, Mr Duterte struck up relationships with leftists while a prosecutor in Davao. His cabinet secretary, Leoncio Evasco, is a former Marxist priest and communist guerrilla.

After taking office, Mr Duterte agreed a truce with the Philippines’ communist insurgents, though it is now fraying. He has been sucked into intractable Muslim insurgencies in the south. In particular, the army is trying to retake the city of Marawi, which groups claiming allegiance to Islamic State suddenly seized in May. Mr Thaksin, too, took a similar no-nonsense approach to an Islamist insurgency in southern Thailand.

Neither man sought power in order to respect the rule of law. The unwitting model for Mr Duterte’s ghastly war on drugs is Mr Thaksin’s similar war against methamphetamine use in 2003. In that, more than 2,800 died in three months at the hands of police and vigilantes, and officials were threatened with punishment for failing to meet targets for seizures and arrests. In Mr Duterte’s war, more than 7,000 Filipinos have died in summary executions by police and hitmen. Amnesty International describes it as a murder economy. Many victims are small-time drug users, or entirely innocent. This week Mr Duterte cut the annual budget of the country’s Commission on Human Rights, a rare voice criticising the killings, to $20.

Waging war on the poor

It is, in effect, a war on the poor—so much for Mr Duterte’s claim to speak for them. Mr Thaksin was a more credible advocate: his introduction of cheap health care for all was groundbreaking. Perhaps Mr Duterte still intends things of substance. He seems to have talked to the communists about sweeping reforms, including the wholesale transfer of land to peasants.

To Mr Vatikiotis, who caught up with the exile sipping white wine in Montenegro, it was clear that Mr Thaksin’s own narrow interests in pursuit of power, including furthering his multibillion-dollar businesses, trumped any real concern for the fate of followers taking to the streets—and being shot—in his support. Even the sudden flight abroad in August of his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, who was facing a controversial court case relating to her time as prime minister, might not spell the end of the Shinawatras, whose ambitions, and pockets, are deep.

As for Mr Duterte, he must know the oligarchy might challenge him if they feel threatened. He has reinforced his political base in Davao, with his daughter and son in prominent positions. Some suspect he might in future use the martial law which he has declared in Mindanao to build an impregnable power base. In the Philippines as in Thailand, the chief challenge to the old order is not full-blooded democracy, but populism.