Who stubbed Robin’s toe?

Senator Robin “Landslide” Padilla. He’s planning to leave the Philippines because he sees “no future in the system.” The system that made him No. 1. Incredible. The system that looked fine when the Dutertes were winning.

The system, by the way, is still paying him. Awkward. Scary, actually. Political squatter: We have a senator who has already divorced the job but still lives in the house, vacancy pretending to be occupancy.

He’s doing a world tour of disappointment with Mariel: the Netherlands, Germany, Iceland, Brunei; putting up Museo de Padilla for sale. Even the house got tired of hosting the legend.

Then he talks about Jimmy Bondoc for 2028. Why are you recommending a friend to enter a burning building? Why pass the misery to Jimmy? What did Jimmy do to you?

Mariel said we don’t deserve Robin. Agree. We must protect him from us. We should not beg him to stay. That’s barbaric: trapping a man in the Philippines with Filipinos. We ask for results. Explanations. Frankly, we’re full of questions. Nobody told him there would be expectations.

We laugh because he looks ridiculous. Then we stop laughing because he looks familiar: tired, emotional, tribal, loyal, suspicious of institutions, one foot rearing for the exit. The betrayal is that he was elected to make that feeling less true for everyone else.

And don’t give us “greener pastures.” It makes it sound like Filipinos are cows looking for better grass. When we are escaping a farm where we are crops. The country grows workers, exports them, praises them as heroes, calls it sacrifice. Department of Agriculture, except the crops send money home and cry at NAIA.

The problem is, Robin, you are not in the same emotional airport. You have a vote in the Senate and a cockpit to command.

So when you say the plane is doomed, people naturally ask: Sir, were you planning to fly it or just enjoy the uniform?

Because you don’t get to call the system hopeless until you can show the bruises from trying to change it.

And if you, Robin, are the joke, why did the joke beat everybody?

Because we saw the name, remembered the face, felt the old movie in the chest; we thought, “I know this guy.” He’d punch the people we hated and make our anger look respectable. A familiar man saying familiar things crudely enough to sound honest.

We choose whom we could forgive; if a technocrat fails, the voter feels fooled. If Robin fails, “at least he’s ours.”

And yet they say voters are smarter now? Smarter at defending the mistake after we make it.

Before, we could be fooled and stay quiet. Now we get fooled, wage war on Facebook, become the mistake’s attorney, then log out and get punished by it in real life.

The same people who cannot resign from the Philippines cannot even resign from the story they told themselves about their vote.

Because the Philippines is not merely their job. It is their cage, their mother, debt, joke, their home. And that is why Filipinos smile so hard. Because otherwise, what, we cry?