Category: robredo

Bracing for May 9 #Halalan2022

The Leni-Kiko monster rallies continue to draw impressively bigger and bigger crowds, and a number of credible political pundits continue to believe that Leni can still pull off a win despite Marcos Jr.’s lead in the surveys. That is, IF we take advantage of the palpable momentum and push even harder toward including the fringes in this movement for change.

May oras pa, ang pahiwatig ni Ronnie Holmes ng Pulse Asia kay Karen Davila sa ANC News noong April 8.

KAREN DAVILA. Historically speaking, based on your experience, have you seen a dramatic shift in surveys in, like, 30 days?

HOLMES. I would say that it’s possible, it’s really quite possible. It would really depend on how each candidate would really change their strategy, intensify their campaign. The last 30 days is like the last 2 minutes of a basketball game. The other team might be leading 12 to 15 points, the last 2 minutes is a crucial thing. If someone shoots five 3-pointers, the game… it’s tied.

So it’s not a question of whether the race is done, you still have 30 days. Those 30 days of campaign will be crucial. It might be best for some candidates to look back in term of their messages, how it can be refined and trying to escalate activities that will generate public support for their candidacy.

Parang Leni-Kiko camp mismo ang pinaparinggan ni Holmes, at sana nakikinig sina Bam Aquino, sana they go beyond the bongga rallies, do the rounds of public markets and factories, apart from house-to-house ikot-sa-barangay.  Ninoy Aquino’s campaign strategy in 1965 when he ran for and placed 2nd (of 8) in the senatorial race, as told by Nick Joaquin in The Aquinos of Tarlac (1983) pages 313-316, might inspire, kahit last minute.

On another front, La Salle Prof. Julio Teehankee told Karmina Constantino in a Dateline: Philippines interview [ANC 4 April] that he  thinks it’s time for something drastic, which sounds like Davila’s “dramatic shift”.

TEEHANKEE.  The frontrunner is sitting pretty just waiting for Election Day to happen, so unless something drastic, you know, some major earthshaking event will happen between now and Election Day…  Time is running out, and he has a comfortable lead. So something must happen to move the needle in favor of those challenging the frontrunner.

KC. Is that pointing to some sort of consolidation, and now is the time to do it?

TEEHANKEE.  It’s now or never. I think those who are seriously thinking of the future of the country should [follow] the lead of similar individuals in history. They must do a Day Laurel or even a Mar Roxas at this point.

Unfortunately Isko, Ping, and Manny do not seem to be up to the sacrifice. And it’s understandable. VP Doy Laurel may have later regretted giving way to Cory in ’86 because he and Cory didn’t get along at all post-EDSA, and he ended up sidelined and ridiculed. I bet Mar Roxas regretted giving way to PNoy, settling for a VP run and waiting for his turn, when he lost to VP Binay in 2010 and then to President Duterte in 2016.  Not very encouraging outcomes there.

TEEHANKEE. Based on the 2016 exit poll of SWS, 54.2 % [of voters] decided only around this time, and a significant 18 % decided on Election Day itself.

Perhaps that’s what’s giving hope to every candidate that s/he will be the chosen one of a majority of voters still deciding at this point in time.  But one can’t win on hope, not when these votes are going at least 4 ways, and not when the frontrunner has been working on a win for a full decade.

Hopefully this Holy Week finds Isko, Ping, and Manny accepting the fact that VP Leni is far ahead of them all, ahead enough to have a real chance of beating Marcos Jr. as she did in 2016, but only if the three throw their support behind her like true gentlemen and statesmen and patriots would—which is exactly how Doy Laurel is remembered, never mind the petty bickering with Cory after.

Surely the three do not wish to go down in history as 2022’s batch of would-be presidents who did not really care about nation. When this is over, win or lose, there will be a reckoning.

Meanwhile, the world that watched and applauded us when we ousted Marcos in ’86 is again watching, this time aghast that another Marcos is running for president and looking like he might win despite his father’s many crimes. And they’re wondering what happened, how could we let this happen, didn’t we see this coming?

I daresay we didn’t think they would go this far. I daresay we were counting on some remorse and some delicadeza on their part, for nation’s sake. Alas. Iba talaga ang mga Marcos.

Last two minutes #Halalan2022

Imelda Marcos, 92, must be on tenterhooks.  We haven’t heard from her for a while now, but I like to think that she knows, sees, hears what’s going on, and that if the surveys are to be believed, tila panalo na si Marcos Jr., Oplan Balik-Palasyo soon to be accomplished, she must be so excited.

But who knows. Ang dami pang puwedeng mangyari. In Imelda’s place  I’d be on some happy anti-anxiety pill by day, and a sosyal -zepam by night, to see me through these next 60 days or so just because, you know, what if?  What if may talo pala, just like in 2016.

What if the kakampinks are right, that the monster crowds of VP Leni’s rallies are a sign that there’s hope of overtaking Marcos Jr. in  the surveys?

And what if other kakampinks are right who simply disbelieve surveys that find Marcos Jr. leading by a comfortable margin … who shrug off the big survey outfits as “bayaran” [as in “False Asia”] … who have this romantic notion that these surveys aren’t tapping the true pulse of the electorate (samples too small, not asking the right questions, atbp) … and others who think that survey respondents are just afraid to speak the truth but dare blurt out Junior’s name just to be pasaway.

What if, indeed.  What if Leni could still win it?  Then the current surge of engaged energy among young creatives aching itching to help, networking across communities, now moving on their own [funded by like-minded titos and titas] to both level up and level down campaign rhetoric in social media and on the ground – especially on the ground, including far-flung LGUs where only Marcos-Duterte posters are to be seen – can only help win this. Hope springs eternal.

Wishful thinking ‘yang balitang the Marcos campaign is losing steam, running out of money even. Aint gonna happen. Mas malamang na bumubuwelo sila for the final push in the last three weeks when they they pull out all the stops — all systems go, all hands on deck, all resources mobilized.

Expect no miracles except that which we can make happen if we act as one in these “last two minutes” when every effort, big and small, is focused on targeting that 31% that we need to convert to our side.  One major concerted action for the good of the whole, beyond what was done the past four months by the official campaign, might surpass expectations.

Sana magulantang natin si Imelda.

#yellowpink

i am yellow and i am pink.  yellow for ninoy, cory, and EDSA.  pink for leni, a no to the sad yellow politics of the liberal party.

pink and yellow go together, literally n figuratively.  they are natural colors that we see everywhere, though never before so blooming everywhere.

meanwhile it’s good to remember, and to talk about, EDSA.  what did we do right, what did we do wrong.  how could we have done it better.

#yellowpink #b4i4get

the marcos curse #ByeByeMarcos

as if the omicron surge and the duterte government’s care-less response weren’t bad enough, we have to deal with a marcos jr. running for president…

one who brings back awful memories of martial law, the conjugal dictatorship, the greatest robbery of a government, the murder of ninoy aquino…

one who faces disqualification cases filed by civil society groups on grounds of income tax evasion and moral turpitude that the COMELEC is taking its sweet time deciding.

not surprisingly there’s talk of “insider” info that the COMELEC, whose seven commissioners are duterte appointees, is “not inclined to disqualify the client of legendary solicitor general Estelito Mendoza of the elder Marcos.

raissa robles is right.  “The Marcoses never really left home” (Inquirer 2014).

In 1998, by Imee Marcos’ own reckoning, “we waited 12 years to be on the right side of the fence.” Right side meant a political alliance with then victorious President-elect Joseph Estrada, velvet seats in Congress for Imee and her mother, and a governorship for Bongbong.

An ecstatic Imee spilled the family’s secret to success: “Many professionals were appointed by my father. So you have this immense bedrock of Marcos appointees who keep moving up.”

Like secret stay-behind units, this vast army of professionals scattered in all sectors of society have defended the Marcoses and helped erase the dark legacy of their regime. 

it’s like ferdinand marcos laid a cruel curse on the nation that the children are happily carrying on in his name, in his memory, with the eager support of a “bedrock” of grateful and beholden loyalists, bureaucrats and professionals from all sectors, who held the fort while they were away, and who have since moved up to real positions of power.

maybe this explains why the court of appeals dropped the jail sentence in marcos jr’s appeal of the RTC decision vis a vis his failure to file income tax returns for four years?

and maybe why COMELEC’s 2nd division ruled against canceling his COC despite the NO to question #22 because the respondent daw “cannot be said to have deliberately attempted to mislead, misinform, or hide a fact which would otherwise render him ineligible” ?!?

really ?!?  as in, he didn’t mean to lie?  is that like saying it was an honest mistake?

but is there anything honest about marcos jr. who has lied again and again about historical facts vis a vis martial law and his parents’ plundering ways, human rights violations and EDSA ’86?

and isn’t the fact that he took 4 years to follow the court of appeal’s order to pay up an indication of moral turpitude — a demonstration of arrogance, as though he were above the law?  isn’t that of a piece with the supreme court’s 2016 definition of moral turpitude in G.R. No. 219603?

Moral turpitude is defined as everything which is done contrary to justice, modesty, or good morals; an act of baseness, vileness or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes his fellowmen, or to society in general. Although not every criminal act involves moral turpitude, the Court is guided by one of the general rules that crimes mala in se involve moral turpitude while crimes mala prohibita do not.  G.R. No. 219603

mala in se are acts wrongful in itself.  mala prohibita are acts that are not inherently evil or wrong.

i submit that tax evasion and lying about having been convicted are inherently wrong — no ifs or buts, no benefit of any doubt — and the liar and tax evader marcos jr. should be disqualified.

here’s praying the COMELEC en banc — or failing there, the supreme court — sees the light and disqualifies marcos jr. once and for all time.

otherwise these institutions would be complicit in perpetuating, keeping alive, the marcos curse on nation, and history and posterity will judge them harshly for betrayal of public trust.