‘My name is Road-reegow Row-whaa Dow-terti’

THE hoarse voice and a somber face and expression from a former strongman in that most viewed video appearance recently at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands was cryptic.

“My name is Road-reegow Row-whaa Dow-terti.”

We’ve seen it only in the recorded films when captured members of rival Mexican and Colombian drug cartels were given the chance to say their last words before being brutally executed.

We’ve heard it only—the guttural voice—from many famous but helpless dictators in history before their barbaric deaths.

The so-called “last words” have always been enduring and epochal.

Thank God former Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte wasn’t in the death chamber, or in the hands of ruthless captors wanting to maim and decimate him when he uttered those dingy words.

It was far cry though from his trademark, the loud and bone-jarring “papatayin ko kayo; p__tang ina ninyo” (I will kill you; you sonnobavitch) woofing where he became obdurately (in)famous.

 No one knew, however, if Mr. Duterte intentionally inveigled it to generate instant sympathy, or he was really scared like a rabbit now that he was isolated and only at the beck and mercy of the ICC that he had threatened and maligned when he was in power.

That monologue will forever be etched in the minds of those who saw it—Filipinos and non-Filipinos all over the world.

“My name is Road-reegow Row-whaa Dow-terti” no doubt was a euphemized appeal to emotion; it has now become a political catchword and could be used by the former president’s die-hards to rally support and gain sympathies, especially that Filipinos have been known to be suckers to underdogs—or those appear to be victims of bullying and persecution.

Media networks that regularly used the “Road-reegow…” clip to chronicle Mr. Duterte’s arrest and detention in the ICC and the updates for his forthcoming full-blown hearing are innocuously helping imbibe in the psyche of the people the perception of oppression and torment supposedly being inflicted on the hitherto hard-hitting ex-Philippine leader accused of the crimes against humanity.