Team DailyPedia
MANILA, Philippines. Do President Rodrigo Duterte and the late American president Abraham Lincoln share other similarities aside from being the 16th president of their respective countries?
A post by a certain Dan Backus showing photos of the 71-year-old President of the Philippines and one of America’s greatest presidents has gone viral.
In the caption of the post, Backus wrote: “Both the 16th President of the United States and the 16th President of the Republic of the Philippines were simple lawyers from the provinces. No one in America would ever question the ability of a simple lawyer from the provinces to lead a nation to greatness.”
While the two political leaders appear to have the same hand gestures in the image, Lincoln’s hand in the photo was edited in such a way that it would look similar to Duterte’s, a netizen pointed out.
An 1869 portrait of Lincoln showing him with the same hand gesture offered a better argument.
Lincoln was a lawyer in Illinois and a member of Illinois House of Representatives before he was elected as the 16th President of the United States of America in 1860. Known for his iconic Gettysburg address which tackled nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy, Lincoln was ranked by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. Presidents. He was responsible for abolishing slavery, modernizing economy, preserving the Union and strengthening the federal government.
Meanwhile, Duterte, a lawyer from Davao City, was among the longest-serving mayors in the Philippines. The only President from Mindanao so far won in a landslide victory amassing more than 16 million votes in the May 2016 elections despite his initial refusal to run for Philippine presidency. The maverick politician is best known for his all-out campaign against drugs, corruption, and criminality.
Despite the two political leaders’ similarities, several netizens pointed out that the coincidence will be only up to numbers and not on political fate as Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865 by a confederate sympathizer.
