If You Have Malasakit, Send the Plane

There is a word in Filipino that has no perfect translation in English. Malasakit. It is more than sympathy. More than concern. It is the active, aching compulsion to do something for another person — to get up from your seat, to use whatever you have, and to move. The measure of malasakit is not how deeply you feel. It is what you do with the feeling.

More than two million Filipinos work in the Middle East. They are in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel. They clean homes, build skyscrapers, nurse the sick, cook in restaurants, and send billions of dollars home every year to families who depend on every single remittance. They are not just workers. They are the economic backbone of the Philippines, the quiet engine behind a national GDP that has long relied on the labor of people who left.

When that region is at peace, we celebrate them. We call them bagong bayani — new heroes. We give them a dedicated lane at the airport. We put their faces on banners. But when the missiles fly, when conflict erupts and fear grips entire nations, a harder question surfaces: does our government treat them as heroes — or as assets it can afford to abandon?

The measure of malasakit is not how deeply you feel. It is what you do with the feeling — and whether you do it before it is too late.

What Duterte Did

Whatever one thinks of Rodrigo Duterte's politics, his administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic repatriation crisis offers a concrete benchmark. When the world shut down and Filipinos abroad were trapped — in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait — the government chartered planes. It was not elegant. It was not seamless. Reception infrastructure buckled. Quarantine facilities overflowed. Repatriated OFWs waited in sweltering gymnasiums.

But the planes went. And they went because there was political will at the top to make it happen — to absorb the cost, the logistics, and the criticism, and to bring Filipinos home. OWWA deployed. DOLE coordinated. The DFA worked back-channels. It was imperfect governance, but it was governance.

The Question That Hangs in the Air

The current situation in the Middle East — with conflict zones expanding, regional war anxieties escalating, and Filipino workers caught in the crossfire of geopolitics they did not choose — demands the same urgency. And yet the question being asked, quietly at first and now louder, is this:

If Duterte could send the plane, why can't Marcos? The aircraft exists. The budget exists. The international precedent exists. The legal framework — OWWA, DOLE, the Migrant Workers Act — exists. What appears to be missing is the political will to prioritize two million Filipinos over diplomatic optics.

This is not a rhetorical question. It is a governance question. Repatriation is not charity — it is a constitutional obligation. The State is bound to protect the rights and welfare of Filipinos working abroad. That obligation does not expire when the host country is a major trade partner. It does not pause for bilateral sensitivities.

The Counterarguments — And Why They Are Not Enough

Defenders of the current administration's pace will offer several counterpoints, and some of them deserve honest examination:

Counterargument 1: "The scale is different."

True — two million OFWs cannot be repatriated in a single operation. But no one is asking for a single operation. The demand is for a sustained, systematic, well-funded program for those who want to come home. Voluntary repatriation. Assisted departure. Welfare desks with actual power. Not press releases.

Counterargument 2: "We must not disturb bilateral relations."

This argument, while diplomatically understandable, has a moral ceiling. At some point, the welfare of Filipino citizens outweighs the comfort of foreign governments. Kuwait discovered this in 2018. Other nations have learned the same lesson when the Philippines decided to enforce standards. Quiet diplomacy is a tool — not an excuse for paralysis.

Counterargument 3: "Not all OFWs want to come home."

Correct, and no one should be forced. But the operative word in this debate is voluntary. Those who wish to return deserve an organized, financially supported pathway home. A properly funded OWWA, active POLO offices, and chartered flights for distressed workers — these are not extreme demands. They are the baseline of what a government that claims malasakit must provide.

The counterarguments explain complexity. They do not excuse inaction. Acknowledging difficulty and acting despite it is the definition of leadership. Acknowledging difficulty and waiting for it to resolve itself is the definition of neglect.

What Real Malasakit Looks Like

Real malasakit for OFWs is not a SONA mention. It is not a hashtag campaign during Migrant Workers Week. It is structural. It is funded. It is boring in the best possible way — embedded in policy, in budget allocations, in staffed embassies that answer their phones.

It looks like an OWWA that processes claims in days, not months. It looks like POLO offices in Riyadh and Dubai with enough lawyers and counselors to handle the caseload. It looks like a government that has already pre-positioned repatriation capacity — aircraft on standby, reception centers ready, livelihood programs waiting — so that when a crisis erupts, the response is swift, not scrambled.

Most of all, it looks like a president who speaks about OFWs not as an economic statistic but as human beings — who stands at a podium and says: if you are in danger, we are coming for you. Not eventually. Now.

"The OFW does not ask for pity. They ask only for the government to honor its end of the bargain: we sacrifice, and you protect us."

A Final Word

Comparing administrations is a fraught exercise. Context shifts. Crises differ. Political capital is finite. These things are true. But there are some truths that survive comparison: an airplane is an airplane. A Filipino in danger is a Filipino in danger. And a government that calls its workers heroes must be prepared, when it matters most, to act like it means it.

The question — Duterte could do it. Why not Marcos? — is not partisan. It is human. It is the question every family with a loved one in the Middle East is asking right now, quietly, over a bowl of rice they could only afford because that loved one left.

If you have malasakit, send the plane. The rest is logistics. And logistics, for a government with the resources and the mandate, is never the real problem.