Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte marked a visit to Tokyo this week by urging a handful of Filipino women on stage to kiss him.
With his wife by his side, Duterte was meeting members of the Filipino community in Japan when he asked those close to the stage to approach and plant kisses on him.
The 74-year-old former mayor, who has previously been labelled a misogynist by his critics, received kisses from five members of the audience before he requested any widows in the audience to come forward.
Duterte is in Japan for business meetings and is due to meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday.
Earlier this year, Duterte addressed a group of women as “bitches” during an awards ceremony highlighting the work of female military and police. After referring to the largely female audience as “puta”, which translates to “bitches”, Duterte later referred to them as “crazy women”, adding: “You criticise every sentence or word I say.”
During a meeting with the Filipino community in South Korea in June 2018, Duterte kissed a Filipino woman on the lips on live television before meeting South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in.
Are you single? You’re not separated from [your husband]? But you can tell him that this is just a joke?” the father-of-four asked the woman, who squealed and placed her hands over her face whilst looking nervous. She eventually allowed him to kiss her on the lips.
“Don’t take it seriously. It’s just for fun, a gimmick,” Duterte told the audience.
The stunt drew ire from feminist groups for treating women as objects of entertainment.
That same year, he instructed soldiers to shoot female communist rebels in the vagina, qualifying his remarks with the statement: “If there is no vagina, it would be useless.”
During his presidential campaign in 2016, Duterte was discussing the 1989 gang rape and murder of an Australian missionary in Davao City when he lamented that he should have been “first” in line to rape her as the city’s mayor at the time.
“I was angry she was raped, yes that was one thing,” he said. “But she was so beautiful, I think the mayor should have been first. What a waste.”