Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

Divide, Undo, Tag: Dealing with Duterte propaganda (1)

At the Ibong Adorno launch of Kult 3, there was a panel discussion with different organizations on the various ways in which they have dealt with the Duterte government’s consistent and constant attacks on the people and on nation’s institutions. The issues and ways were expectedly diverse, from using platforms to engage with issues of urban poor displacement, immersion and publishing focused on marginalized sectors and workers’ and farmers’ rights, from alternative media work to organizing cultural workers towards more critical resistance work.

I was the only one who carried my name as individual, although I was tagged as someone who has maintained CurrentsPH (on Facebook) since 2017, which originally was to be a website (a beta version is still up here). But as I said in the introduction to my quick talk, it took only the first year of Duterte to realize that there is little value in talking facts and doing timelines at a time when the truth doesn’t matter and no one is spending time fleshing out issues — or even talking issues, really.

The battle in fact is one that’s about propaganda. We are faced with a well-strategized Duterte propaganda program, one that we have been unable to even make a dent on, one that we have been unable to win against, the past three years. I’ve talked about this often enough with friends and peers, and when I’m asked how to beat it, my answer is simple: first we admit we’re in over our heads.

These are strange, difficult, confusing, exhausting times, and the old tools don’t work in exactly the same way. We are weakened by this Duterte machinery, manipulated to forget bigger pictures as we are made to contend with the smaller but real attacks against us. How to move forward? One, admit our weaknesses; two, understand this propaganda strategy; so that three, we can actually figure out how to beat it.

Here, an effort at doing numbers 1 and 2.  (more…)

komentaryo

George Ty tales: One estate, two names, five children

It’s become interesting the reactions I’ve gotten for deciding to talk about George Ty’s estate controversy. Some have come in the form of links and screencaps from anonymous sources; some are asking questions about who his real wife is. But my favorite is a long-ish comment on this page telling me basically that I’m making a mountain out of molehill, that it’s all much ado about nothing, my questions about why George Ty’s declared estate is but a fraction of his P700-billion-peso net worth before he died. According to this comment, it’s all very simple: George Ty had time to transfer his estate to his different children and business interests, and therefore the declaration of but P3 billion is all possible, and legal, and above ground.

But see, here’s the thing: I’m not even asking about possibility or legality. I’m asking about why it’s even allowed. I’m asking about why it’s even being done. After all, just because something can be done, doesn’t make it right.

Here’s the other thing: telling me not to look into something just makes me want to dig deeper into exactly the same thing. And in the case of George Ty, it’s a wonder what simple Google searches yield, given what is a seeming news blackout from around February 2019 to the present. Layer this with being told this is a non-story, and so many sources sending questions and screencaps, and one cannot help but think that there really is more to this than meets the eye.

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komentaryo

#SONA2019: Unpacking Duterte’s propaganda strategy

It’s a ruse. At the State of the Nation Address of Rodrigo Duterte last Monday, there was silence about charter change. Not even a peep about federalism, nothing at all about easing of economic provisions in the current 1987 Constitution. This is as deathly a silence as we can get from Duterte — and we all know he thinks nothing of murder.

This is why we should talk about the SONA, and not just in isolation, but in relation to the bigger picture that is Duterte’s propaganda strategy. That is after all what keeps him winning. It is what keeps him in this position of power.  And we need to get our shit together about this propaganda if we are to even make a dent against it.

Of course three years in and we now know that Duterte propaganda strategy #1 is: use the President’s big mouth to distract the public. But from what? And given this knowledge, what do we do next other than raise our fists in anger?  (more…)

komentaryo

George Ty’s estate, Ramon Ang’s airport, Dennis Uy’s city, Ayala’s casino: Duterte sides with the wealthy

You know how Duterte propaganda has lived off this idea that he is angry at the rich? That he is against the elite? That he is against their abusive ways, and anti-people policies? This is how refusing to give the Lopezes of ABS-CBN their franchise is justified; this is how the Prietos of the Philippine Daily Inquirer lost their power. This also sustains the idea that Duterte is pro-poor, para sa masa, si Tatay Digong kakampi ng mahihirap na Pilipino.

We have of course disproven this, regardless of what his base believes. He himself has admitted that majority of those killed in his drug war are poor — because the rich addicts are using other drugs anyway, and the wealthy who run the cartels, the drug manufacturing, the drug imports, he has no power to jail them.

But there’s an even more obvious, more blatant, display of Duterte siding with the rich: and it’s in his utter silence about issues that involve his oligarch, taipan, crony allies. Let us count the ways, shall we?  (more…)

komentaryo

Duterte chooses charter change #CongressPH #NoToChaCha

Duterte, his men, and his children have circled the wagons, and we should all know better than just to watch it happen. At the very least, we learn from it. Because this is the first time that the process is on the surface — we are being shown the action, and we are allowed to infer the unfolding, and we have seen how the crisis was resolved, so they can all move towards the conclusion — that of Charter Change, which is at the heart of this (now resolved) fight for the House Speakership.

The show was interesting enough of course, even as it was a dead-end for nation. The battle was always only among Duterte’s men, with all three, Alan Peter Cayetano, Lord Allan Velasco, and Martin Romualdez pledging loyalty to the President. Of course Romualdez is more of a Gloria Arroyo (and Marcos) ally; Velasco seems to have come out of nowhere but is supported by Duterte propagandists; and Cayetano, well, is only loyal to himself — but all of that doesn’t matter when they’re united for the common Duterte cause.

Unity has been such a part of the plot that Duterte and his men put together, and the audience almost doesn’t matter: we aren’t supposed to care. After all, we all know that Duterte controls Congress, and will give him everything on a silver platter. But this battle for the house speakership was taking too long to get resolved, and in the meantime, we were being given too much information about how corrupt, how greedy, how power-hungry the men who surround Duterte are — his children included.

So what did this battle for House Speakership reveal?

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