While political pundits in mainstream media claim that Sara Duterte’s resignation from the Marcos Cabinet was expected, it is important to speak of its timing. After all, on and for social media and digital platforms, everything is content, and major announcements like this one is fuel for mass drops and mileage. Over in the other country that is the Marcos-Duterte Tiktok algorithm, this resignation was not only expected, they were ready for it.

Since two days ago, the VP has taken over the algorithm like it’s nobody’s business, unseating the dominance of the Roque-MrSupranational memes, the West Philippine Sea content, and the usual Marcos-activities-based content. Considering that we had just come from Independence Day celebrations and the President continues to travel the country to distribute all sorts of assistance himself, there is usually enough content that sustains him. But Sara’s army has been pretty solid, churning out content that drowns out everybody else. Unsurprisingly, this includes a bunch of SMNI and SMNI-related accounts, solid Duterte accounts, and even accounts with low mileage, but which have been mass dropping support-Sara videos.

And when I say they were “ready” for it, I do also mean that the content has been making connections the mainstream cannot even begin to talk about. For example, highlighting the fact that it was also on June 19 two years ago when Sara had taken her oath as Vice President, which allows them to spin her resignation as an act that brings her back to the position she had won—the one that proves the love and support of “the people”—and not the position(s) that were given to her by the President turned non-ally. There also seems to be massive content that quickly drew the line between her and the President, not just ending the Uniteam illusion, but also championing the Sara side of it, the one that was green, the one that was about the eagle.

As with the Marcos legacy campaign of 2022, there is much here that harks back to the Duterte father’s 2016 campaign, with content declaring in so many words that change is finally coming, because Inday Sara is now free from her cabinet positions, now on a clean break from the administration. This means a major change for “the opposition”—a label that the Duterte propagandists claim is theirs. Tied to content that came from the last Maisug rally in Pampanga, where the older Duterte declared that they were not wanting to take down the Marcos government; and where the younger Duterte mayor insisted that all they were asking for was that the President “listen to the majority”—referring of course to themselves; the declaration of a stronger “opposition” now that the Vice President is free to be opposition, has become a very seamless narrative.

Which of course is reason for the rest of us, at the very least, to take stock. Propaganda-wise, we are being outdone by this claim of being “opposition” that the Dutertes and their clique maintain. And when I say they “maintain” it, it’s to say that they’re doing it where it counts—sustaining social media accounts, no matter how small, no matter the very specific audience, no matter the impossibility of actually proving the claim of having “the majority” of “the people”. This might seem easy to dismiss now, think it a matter for Tiktok, even disregard it as hilarious and absurd. But we all know that the Marcoses won—as did Duterte—on a sustained, well-strategized, campaign strategy that was in it for the long haul. One that stayed on message even when it was being dismissed and disregarded—especially, and even as, it was being dismissed and disregarded.

But our bigger problem might be that we can’t even really lay claim to an opposition—a real one, where we come from.

The middle and upper classes, the educated, have yet to gain its footing with regards the Marcos government, and it’s really because whether we admit it or not, there is a sense of relief. At least for us, the things that were horrid about Duterte are not there anymore: there’s no drug war that fills our news feeds with killings every day; there’s no convoluted Presidential speeches at midnight; no normalized misogyny and toxic masculinity from our leaders; no horrid governance that flouts all sense of propriety and dignity.

But of course this is us. And if there’s anything we also know for sure, it’s that we are not necessarily the ones who win elections—in fact we might be pretty good at losing it, if 2016, 2019, and 2022 are any indication. Contrary to our sensing that the world revolves around the same issues of human rights, freedoms, and governance, the Duterte presidency discredited all of that while refusing to talk to us. Instead he spoke to his mass base of voters, and rightfully so: they were the ones experiencing the kamay-na-bakal differently. In these communities, the drug war meant peace and order, a quiet in their communities they had never experienced before, and curfews were a way to bring kids home early and keep husbands away from inuman sessions—not at all a violation of freedoms. In fact, losing freedom was okay if it meant a safer community.

This is of course what the Duterte propaganda that lays claim to the opposition also depends on. It knows that the conversations they need to have with a mass political base has to be about hunger and need, the rising cost of goods, the West Philippine Sea crisis—things that they can say weren’t a problem during Duterte’s time. It doesn’t matter whether this is true or false; what matters is that it is being said over and over again, and at scale. What matters is that inflation in fact is being felt, and there is no need to explain it—only the need to point a finger at the one who is responsible for it.

The rest of us, meanwhile, have yet to have a message that resonates. To an extent we seem to still be in denial—maybe delusional—about how the Duterte administration went down, and how it made mincemeat of all of us.

So maybe, a reminder. There is no point in denying that Duterte and his propaganda team did good work at discrediting his political opposition. The vilification of the Left, the jailing and killing of activists, justified through a narrative built on the connection drawn between armed militants in the underground and the legal organizations engaged in mainstream political life, pretty much destroyed the public’s sensing of the Left as political opposition, but maybe more importantly, as the public’s ally. The Liberals didn’t have it any easier. Not only did the hate against them start from the 2016 campaign, it also just snowballed on Duterte’s first year, and continues to the present: Recoloring the Liberals means nothing when the language, the tone, the tenor, the nose high up in the air, remain the same.

Early into this Marcos Presidency—when the Uniteam still existed, Quiboloy was still on SMNI, and SMNI still had air—Presidential sister and Senator Imee Marcos spoke to Quiboloy himself, feigning surprise at the Marcos win (as if her family hadn’t been working on it for decades), and in the end giving credit to former President Duterte for “finishing off our enemies”. Inubos ang mga kalaban namin, she said.

She was being honest, wasn’t she?

She was also inadvertently answering the question: Why is there no political opposition two years since the 2022 elections?

There is massive work to be done. We need to have started the moment we lost 2022.***