Digong weeps at parents’ tomb, begs ma to help him

TEARS FOR FEARS? Presumptive President Rodrigo Duterte seems overwhelmed by emotion when he visited his parents’ tomb early Tuesday morning as election results showed him leading by a wide margin. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

DAVAO CITY—Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte wept like a child before his parents’ tomb during a predawn visit on Tuesday.

“Ma, tabangi ko. (Ma, please help me),” the 71-year-old Davao City mayor was heard saying in Visayan between sobs as media networks reported his irreversible lead in Monday’s presidential election.

After a two-hour interview with sect leader Apollo Quiboloy on the pastor’s late night show, Duterte got in his black pickup car with his common-law wife, Honeylet Avanceña, and daughter, Veronica.

Past 3 a.m., they proceeded to the Davao public cemetery. With his right hand covering his eyes and his left clenched fist on the marble tomb inside his parents’ mausoleum, Duterte was heard sobbing. A 30-second video of his crying made the rounds online and drew snide remarks that he’s a “sissy.”

He later told local journalists he had been wanting to cry like that.

Peter Laviña, Duterte’s spokesperson and the head of his media team, said the Davao mayor was soft-hearted and he might have had an emotional outburst as the reality he would be the country’s next President sank in.

Previously, Duterte was seen weeping as children diagnosed with cancer sang before him.

Gratitude

But it was rare to see him cry so hard like that. “It was more of gratitude I think,” Laviña said.

Duterte is the son of Vicente Duterte, former governor of the still undivided Davao del Sur, and school teacher Soledad.

Inday Sara Duterte, the mayor’s daughter, said her grandfather died when her father was living a wayward life.

The mayor’s biggest regret, she said, was that her grandfather did not see her father a successful man.

The young Duterte was kicked out of high school three times. The tough-talking mayor often told this story in wooing voters banking on his image of being an ordinary citizen.

Duterte told reporters on Monday night that he would not celebrate until the final results are announced.

“I ain’t there until I am there,” Duterte said, noting that in his 11 previous election campaigns, he had shut himself away from the news during the vote counts.

In his interview with Quiboloy on Monday night, Duterte said his victory fulfilled a prophecy made 18 years ago.

Dream

Quiboloy, a longtime friend of Duterte and head of the religious sect Kingdom of Jesus Christ, dreamt two decades ago of the Davao mayor talking to bigwigs in government on the Malacañang grounds.

“It is hard to believe that it is self-fulfilling. I was awed by God and the pastor,” Duterte said.