‘Nabudol,’ a rude awakening

If he had been one of my military interrogators (composed of six colonels and a general) in Fort Bonifacio during the dark years of the Marcos dictatorship, I would have worn extra armor to turn the tables on him, the way we, women journalists under siege then did on our inquisitors. Thank heavens, he was not, though, really, I was a hard nut to crack.

I’m referring to Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop, of Philippine Military Academy Class ’70, a retired police general and former head of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, a lawyer, and a member of the House of Representatives’ quad committee. Acop last week read the committee report on the links between Philippine offshore gaming operations, illegal drugs, and extrajudicial killings during the Duterte presidency. It was a chilling, damning summary report that placed Duterte at the center of it all.

The Inquirer’s front-page story, “House panel: Duterte center of criminal enterprise,” (News, 12/14/2024), by Krixia Subingsubing, had the added word “grand.” The committee report had used that term: “Grand criminal enterprise.” The quad comm members had been noteworthy in their efforts to arrive at the truth, each with a style of his/her own, in diction, use of words, and catching the resource persons in their most vulnerable moments.

I had watched the livestreamed marathon hearings like I was watching a drama playing out, partly for information but also as entertainment with all its twists and turns. “As entertainment,” I meant I was holding at bay the rage inside me lest it causes harmful hormonal, metabolic, and chemical changes in my system. For why should I get myself into a rage while the truth was unraveling, and the evil deeds of the scum of the earth were being exposed?

In his metallic voice, Acop had a calm but disconcerting way of drawing out an answer from the subpoenaed resource persons, some of them players in the “grand enterprise.”

“Yes or no?” Acop would ask, like a lawyer would, his eyes narrowing into slits. And when the beleaguered person of interest answered with a feeble, “Yes, Your Honor,” Acop would loudly repeat the “Yes,” while suppressing a grin of delight to get it on record and as if to say, “You son of a gun, you have just dug your own grave!”

But there was something he said that could resonate with many people, especially those who had been scammed at some point in their life, duped, let down, or known injustice.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned, “The quad comm has started to uncover a grand criminal enterprise, and it would seem that at the center of it is former president Duterte. Napakasakit po nito dahil pawang tayo ay nabudol. (This is painful because we’ve all been scammed.)” An OMG moment there.

We’ve been had, we’ve been scammed, we’ve been taken for a ride. In Filipino, naisahan, na-onse, ginawa tayong tanga, naloko. In Ilonggo, na-into. “Nabudol tayo” almost sounds like it was partly our fault because we had been stupid and the perpetrators were, to use a phrase to describe highwaymen, “smarter than others.”

Budol-budol used to refer to some kind of mind-altering methods scammers used to dupe their victims into handing over their savings, jewelry, etc. without any protestations, as if the victims were placed in some kind of altered state of consciousness. The perpetrators preyed mostly on senior citizens walking by themselves, and clueless househelp who were made to believe that their employers were in the hospital and needed money. I had interviewed budol-budol victims and after my article came out, I received letters from victims who recounted how they were scammed. I had to write a part two.

These days, the word budol has an expanded meaning, used to also describe online scams. It has entered the realm of politics, as when voters are made to believe that a populist candidate is God’s gift to the nation, but would turn out to be a bag of watery poop.

Such is the gist of the quad comm report. Duterte’s war on drugs that he vowed would end the drug menace and exterminate those involved through extrajudicial methods, turned out to be a smokescreen for a myriad of other crimes, a smokescreen for a “grand criminal enterprise,” in fact. As noted in the Inquirer banner story, “Acop reported that Duterte and his inner circle used the drug war as cover for the so-called ‘Davao Mafia’ to profit off the drug trade and eliminate its competition.”

It is a long, long story that needs to be told again and again. Do I smell a book in the making? When will Duterte defenders and apologists on his payroll, blind followers, and troll farm operatives—perhaps still in the millions—have their rude awakening and realize that they were part of the “grand criminal enterprise”?

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