EDITORIAL - Rolito Go: Only in the Philippines

This tweet, under an assumed name, couldn’t have said it better regarding the Rolito Go caper: “I find the rumor about the man-eating snake at Robinsons Mall more believable than claims that inmate Rolito Go has been kidnapped. Come on.”

 Yet, incredibly, that is where the initial investigation seems to be going — meaning Go may have truly been abducted. If that is so, then this case richly deserves to become the latest entry in that growing compendium that comes under the heading “Only in the Philippines.”

 Only in the Philippines can a convicted killer doing time at the national penitentiary be actually kidnapped, and then freed a day later after fighting off his abductors. Go, by the way, is no ordinary killer, having figured in a celebrated road rage case.

 But then, again, strange occurrences are no strangers to Philippine prisons. Take Ruben Ecleo, who is now in hiding following his conviction for the murder of his wife. While awaiting trial in Cebu, Ecleo also did some strange things in jail.

 Into his cell, which he was allowed by jail authorities to screen from public view with blankets and pieces of cardboard, Ecleo was able to bring and enjoy a woman. And when he was not engaged in that type of enjoyment, he played music.

 He managed to make his own musical instruments with power tools (that’s right, only in the Philippines can power tools be allowed inside prisons) he requested. And right there from his cell he performed a concert. Oh how the jailhouse rocked.

 Ecleo eventually got out of jail. With such an obliging court declaring him a “walking time bomb,” there was no need to kidnap him. The walking time bomb simply walked out of jail, checked into a hospital, got elected into Congress, and then vanished.

 In the late 1980s, corrupt police officials would regularly bring out prisoners and bring them to the city center and there unleash them on the population, robbing and snatching, until it was time to go back behind bars.

 In the 1990s, it was hovels for rent. Cottages built right inside the jail compound were leased out short time for horny inmates to have sex with anyone the jail authorities can smuggle inside — be they lonely wives, forsaken girlfriends, or plain low-flying jailbirds.