NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — Regional politics makes for strange bedfellows, and at first glance, it is hard to imagine more of an odd couple than tempestuous Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his cerebral de facto Myanmar counterpart, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who met Monday in Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw. While their meeting is said to have included the usual pro forma talk about trade and investment, it had a tangible result when Duterte promised $300,000 in humanitarian aid for Myanmar's Rakhine state, where communal conflict has displaced more than 100,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes. When she stepped up to support the unsuccessful rebellion, her fresh face, name recognition, and eloquence rocketed her to the leadership of the pro-democracy movement. Widespread prejudice against the country's Muslim Rohingya minority has led to deadly communal violence, posing a political threat to Suu Kyi while earning international opprobrium. A former government prosecutor who dealt with rogue policemen, outlaws and insurgents, he parlayed that background to build a name in politics as a tough and hands-on overseer of a city who dealt harshly with law breakers, especially drug dealers and addicts, hundreds of whom ended up dead in Davao. While seen as a tough and unorthodox leader who could break through an anemic bureaucracy and tradition to spark radical reforms, he faces the same deep-seated problems that have stymied his predecessors: crushing poverty that afflicts a fourth of more than 100 million Filipinos, decades-old Muslim and Marxist insurgencies, and often-turbulent politics.

 

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