Overseas Filipinos, Duterte's Base, Handed Him the Gun

Overseas Filipinos are the Dutertes’ first and main — and solid — base. It started in 2015, when the Duterte camp seeded among them the lie that Davao was one of the safest cities in the world. The rest is sordid history.

This Duterte base is familiar with the unpleasant realities back home: poverty, corruption, crime, name it. That's precisely why many of them left to begin with. But, having lived for years, even decades, in countries where those things are nonexistent or not much of an issue, they have since grown out of touch with the effects those realities have on Filipinos in the Philippines: abuse, neglect, poor governance, name it.

In my work trips abroad, particularly Europe and the US, I always make it a point to touch base with overseas Filipinos. A familiar theme almost always comes up in these interactions, even among those who we can classify as progressive. "Why can't our country be better?" "Why can't we have better traffic?" "Why is there so much crime?" "Why can't the Philippines be like [INSERT WESTERN COUNTRY] where things work perfectly, where we know where taxes are going?"

They not only sounded helpless and exasperated when they told me these -- they sounded indignant. For good reason, I suppose.

In the context of the rise of Duterte beginning in 2016, I became convinced that they’ve become much more willing to enable and support their leaders in cutting corners when dealing with our problems (like illegal drugs) because they feel — thanks to the power of their remittance and their hard work and their sacrifice — entitled to “discipline” not only their relatives back home but a whole country that failed them, a whole population that can't seem to work just as hard as them.

And the comforts they enjoy in Europe or America? They want those back home, too! Not only for the relatives they left behind but also for them when they decide to return to the motherland to retire. They question, often indignantly, why that never happened. So when administrations fail, as they often do in the Philippines, these Filipinos abroad give -- without hesitation, without much thought -- the likes of Duterte the gun.

At the height of the drug war, this Duterte base was cheering the violence on, convinced that Duterte was carrying out their wishes, their mission. He was, in a way, venting their frustration and their outrage. That required the diminution, if not elimination, of empathy, which was apparently not a difficult thing to do. I remember one OFW mother telling me, “Buti nga sa kanila, matitigas ang ulo (Serves them right; they're pigheaded),” referring to the targeting of alleged drug users in the "drug war." More recently, an OFW relative of mine justified their support and admiration for Duterte by fulminating (on Facebook) about their miserable life growing up in a slum area in my hometown.

This base does not care about the facts. It doesn't care if Duterte indeed "fixed" the problems in the Philippines that they've been so angry about. It doesn't care about whether the tyrant delivered or not on the things he promised to do, such as making the Philippines "Singapore-like." It doesn't care about any of that, except the one promise Duterte did deliver on -- to kill thousands of their compatriots.

I'm not generalizing here but many overseas Filipinos, including those chanting "Bring Duterte Home" in The Hague, have blood on their hands. But they don’t see it, they don't feel it, they don't smell it because it is all on Duterte’s. And they’re fine with that.

Duterte will probably spend the rest of his life in the cold jails of the ICC. He will be alone but the thousands of overseas Filipinos who enabled him, who handed him the gun, who egged him on to pull the trigger -- they might as well be there.