They arrived in trickles, gathering in front of the prison fortress in the dead of night, oblivious to the biting cold they had cursed years ago when their longing for safety and shelter for kin took them to distant lands where evenings are longer and the cold nights bite fingers and toes. At the prison gates they came to record on their camera phones the arrival of the former president, whom they call Father, still with much affection three years after the end of a reign soaked in the blood of innocents.

For six years, from the distance of a thousand miles or more, images of death in the dark alleys of their beloved country flooded their social media feeds. But there was no outrage, just silent acquiescence, or some malevolent glee.

The distance has left them inured, emotions cold as nighttime in Antartica, or Hamburg, or Leeds, or the middle of the North Sea. The carnage back home is Father’s way of dispensing tough love or discipline, they would say, like a father smothering a crying infant. It was what we needed, what we deserved, finally a regime of order in a nation of chaos and corruption, of feeble eunuchs running bureaucracies rotting like the nation’s soul. They yearn for the order and discipline and progress of their adopted countries, even if order and discipline and progress in most of these genteel havens have been built on the stable foundations of tolerance, democracy, and human rights. 

They have known all of them, these migrant workers toiling in distant lands, sending money to family and fattening the national treasury while being promised to, lied to, stolen from. But then the Father came and promised deliverance and change and redemption and killings, a bundled package for the price of one vote, demanding only surrender of decency and empathy, even if at the end of his reign murder was the only promise fulfilled.

Yet it was fulfillment, a validation of a wise choice. He was the man we needed, and he rewarded our distant loyalty with the peace of the graveyard, body parts, corpses, and mother’s tears. 

The Father’s winter

The Father is being unjustly held in a prison fortress, they rage, spirited away by a cowardly regime to The Hague, at night, in spring. Springtime is when the Netherlands really comes alive, says the official travel website, when tulips begin to bloom, “a fresh wind blows and the sun is shining.” But the Father came in the dead of night, his last images of the outside world shrouded in black.

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“The Hague is perhaps best known among visitors for its beaches, monuments and bustling shopping district,” adds the website, “but secretly this city has more to offer, much more.” The website invites the visitor to look beyond the beaches, the parks, the shops, the cafes where foreign-born entitled brats can wake and bake without fear of tokhang. Gaze at the edifice known as  the Peace Palace, “…the home of the International Court of Justice, the only judicial body of the United Nations that is located outside of New York,” and now, oddly, the prison fortress a curious attraction, where the Father, also known as the Butcher and the Punisher, is detained to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

They came from all parts of Europe, on foot, on cars, on tour buses organized by the more enterprising, to celebrate his 80th birthday. He was 42 when he became mayor of Davao City after the revolution that toppled the father of the man who sent him to prison. Only 42 when power and bloodlust fueled his ambition, his desire to turn the nation into a killing fields finally achieved in 2016. He surveyed from his throne of blood the river of corpses — critics, activists, lawyers, journalists, addicts, pushers, old, young, those he deemed subhuman enemies of the state. And all was good. 

A celebration of life?

There was a ripple of green, shades of mint on his birthday. They came to celebrate the life of a death-dealer. The faithful migrants waved Philippine flags, carried banners, sang songs. Some prayed the rosary, quoted scriptures, prayed for the Father’s release, imploring the intervention of a God dismissed by the Father as stupid, prayed for deliverance and not mercy for there is no shame, no remorse, no acceptance of wrongdoing or sin, black being the color of the Father’s piety. 

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And still they adore him. They yearn for the days when hate defined the national conversation and fear gripped the streets. Reanimated by the Father’s arrest, they cursed and insulted journalists from home, the Philippine government, the President, the police, the military, the justices of the International Criminal Court. Their behavior reminded us of the path our nation took nine years ago, one that we should never take again. 

It is spring outside the prison walls. Inside his cell, the Father has entered his winter. He will likely spend the rest of his mortal life inside this cell, the shouts and prayers from the crowd he will hear only as secondhand tales of undying love and loyalty as told by family members with retribution on their minds and hate in their hearts. 

Yes, the adoring throng of migrant workers remain loyal even when the Father is unable to reward them with gifts of body parts, corpses, and mother’s tears. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a government and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice president Jejomar Binay.