Category Archive for: bayan

komentaryo

61 days: content wars, elitism, fandoms, radio silence #Halalan2022

After the 2019 elections, I gave a short talk at an event in CubaoX and said very clearly and pointedly: this is a propaganda war. The 2019 results tell us that no matter student surveys, and good debate mileage, and better candidates, we are on a losing streak. The Liberal Party and the Left have public opinion going against it, no matter the delusions our social media echo chambers allow us to have. On ground, and in reality, a chunk of the population (43% is the number I’ve heard) are a hard no on LP, and going into the elections, this would be a hard no against VP Leni.

Did changing to the color pink from yellow mean anything? I think it did, especially for the middle and upper classes who are as incensed with LP and the kind of politics they stood for—2010 to 2016 is very very recent history after all. But the question now, with 61 days to go, is how far the pink has brought us, beyond our echo chambers, despite the rally numbers.

Yesterday a message went around calling on everyone to get out of echo chambers because despite the massive turnout and social and mainstream media noise about the consecutive rallies Robredo had last week, in reality the share of voice online was still dominated by Marcos. Again, as with surveys, this is data—real numbers that should tell us whether or not any and all parts of this campaign are going in the directions it needs to.

Do the surveys contradict the rally numbers? I don’t think so. The rallies and surveys come together as proof of the complexity of the electoral landscape. The numbers out there are important—these give the impression of mass support, and provides us with the content we need. But the numbers on the surveys are just as important, especially given how these also function as a way to prove mass support. (more…)

komentaryo

63 Days: Elections in a multiverse #Halalan2022 #Demokrasya

Of the many absurdities that I have found myself enduring since all headspace and energy were taken over by the May 9 2022 vote, it is this particular space called Marcos propaganda that has been most instructive.

Its instructions for followers are basic: simplify the campaign, do not speak down to voters, keep our candidate in his safe space, get rabid propagandists to balance out the simplified campaign and simpleton candidate, while giving both the campaign and candidate deniability for the trash the rest of the propaganda strategy spews.

But what might be more instructive is what it teaches us about ourselves, who are on this side of the battle for democracy, rights, and justice. (more…)

komentaryo

White knight #GracePoe #Halalan2022

In 2019, seeing only two people on the non-Duterte side surviving the Senatorial onslaught of #Duterte‘s people, I knew Grace Poe would be the one with a chance of winning 2022 with us.

One day to go to substitutions, and now clear that Sara Duterte is running with Bongbong Marcos, and Rodrigo Duterte is running as VP to Bong Go, I still think the same.

Is it close to impossible? I hear that the answer is yes. Poe is not up to it. Am I writing this essay anyway? Yes. Because lest it be said that no one said it out loud, I would rather be that lone voice that does so.

I am all for hopefulness, but I was never one for blindness.

What we want—what we need—is to win. The current surveys show us what direction this is heading, and even the closest candidate to Marcos is Isko, a Marcos wannabe himself. The Liberal campaign, as far as this outsider can tell, has nothing but a change in color that fools no one. (And while I’m here, let me say that after I removed myself from the Leni campaign groups, my newsfeed on FB has ceased to be pink. I took only about 10 days for that algorithm to change, and it’s an important thing to consider whenever you think, or imagine, that the numbers on our side are growing, or that there is “public clamor” for anything at all. Know that algorithms make us think that, for a reason.)

And this is also why Grace remains, to me, the most viable candidate that can win 2022 for us versus Marcos-Duterte-Go.

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komentaryo

Leni and the Liberals

Duterte has made unity easy. He, along with the Marcoses, make the enemies of 2022 clear.

The vision for 2022 elections is also easy to unite on: unseat Duterte, block Marcos, stop the attacks on the people, recover from the incompetence and corruption, and take back democracy. The first step was always to build the broadest, widest coalition of anti-Duterte block-Marcos actors, that could in turn unite a majority of citizens, who are then empowered and emboldened to work on pushing for the candidate we all can believe will work on the vision for a better 2022.

VP Leni is certainly one of those candidates. Were Ka Leody not running, she would be alone in the uncompromising stand against the Marcoses getting back in power, and against the violence and incompetence of Duterte. Isko remains a distinct possibility if we are going to go beyond his budget-Duterte rhetoric and discuss instead what he is capable of doing, given the platform he is running on. But VP Leni, especially given everything she mapped out in a talk with The Rotary Club on October 14 is far far ahead of this pack, if we are thinking saying the right things for middle class support, and if we are thinking of who is on our side.

BUT the promise of unity is not one she can make, the notion of “independence” that she carries nothing more but an act. A symbolic act she admits, but now being revealed to be an act and not much else. Yet.

This has little to do with who she included in her slate—I can accept as strategic the need to build a slate that can beat the Cayetanos and Tulfos of this world, and therefore the need to have Binay, Escudero, Legarda on that list.

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komentaryo

Grace #Halalan2022

Talking 2022 means talking about the elephant in the room that is Grace Poe.

It is clear to anyone who has a sense of how elections are won and lost, who has as starting point Duterte-Marcos’s massive propaganda machinery, who looks at surveys critically vis a vis one’s own political biases, that the only way to win this is to bring together the business sector, the middle classes, and the mass vote behind one candidate.

It was clear, since the 2019 Senatorial election results, that this would be Grace.

And no, you’re not talking to a Grace Poe fan. Search through this site and my social media accounts and you’ll see that I have had the worst opinions of her in terms of where she stands on oligarchs, at the same time that I have been impressed by how she takes the side of the transport sector and commuters in the Senate inquiries she’s led. This doesn’t make me two-faced. It makes HER a Senator, and it makes me a citizen who agrees as much as I might disagree with the people in power.

But that IS the thing isn’t it? The right to vote is tied to a sense of our responsibility to nation, not to the people we vote into positions of power. We are not their fans, or their followers; positions of power aren’t Facebook Pages or Twitter accounts. This is about citizenship and about having a sense of what nation needs at any given point, relative to the decisions that our leaders make for us, in our names, using our funds, regardless of whether we voted for them or not.

No one seems to see this anymore, and this is no surprise. Duterte propaganda has pushed even the most sane, most rational among us to turn to fanaticism and troll discourse, which is easy to fall prey to on social media, where people across Left to Liberal leanings have enjoyed deeper echo chambers. Yes, you will get leaders, from VP Leni to Makabayan talking about uniting the opposition, but none of that matters when their actors are first to engage in divisive, DDS-like behavior on public platforms.

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