komentaryo

Pointed appointments (Part 2): Bring on the women #MarcosV2

Depending on what echo chamber or algorithm you’re in, you might be seeing any (or all) of this on your social media feeds, private GCs, and public channels, since June 1 hit:

  • Complete and utter denial: we were cheated! you say. Here’s a petition! Sign this petition! Or that petition! Or this one!
  • Untrammeled anger: against anyone and everyone that you assert “enabled” this Marcos-Duterte win, which means calls for boycotting non-pink establishments and businesses, tendencies towards attacking private individuals on public Twitter, and seeing everything wrong with everything said and done by the old (Duterte) and new (Marcos) leaderships.
  • Sardonic elitism: “Ang taas ng presyo ng bilihin? Bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Ginusto niyo ‘yan.”
  • Non-profit hope: Let’s go Angat-Buhay-NGO!

Unless of course you’re part of the other side of what is left of the political opposition. Which means you might be part of the Left and dealing with massive attacks, one after the other, across protests on the streets and in farmlands, to websites and social media, all via the ever reliable fascism of one Lorraine Badoy and NTF-ELCAC. It has been the most horrible way the Duterte government has kept the Left preoccupied the past five years—as if the incompetent anti-people governance wasn’t enough to make anyone’s head spin, and keep one’s people and resources perennially exhausted.

And then there’s the rest of us, of which I’d like to think there is a far larger number, who have so decided to just get back to our lives pre-electoral anxieties and post-electoral stresses. On the one hand, a seeming privilege; on the other, also one we have in common with the mass electorate that put Marcos-Duterte in power. After all, what is there for us to do after an election is won or lost? (more…)

komentaryo

Pointed appointments (Part 1) #MarcosV2

I totally understand many in the liberal opposition that have decided to deepen the political divide and decided to just live in their echo chambers. It is easiest thing to do. And certainly, at this point, maybe the mental and emotional well-being of many depend on this cutting off from the real.

But I draw the line at disbelieving the loss. I draw it at insisting that the 31 million isn’t real, then insisting that we are proud of being one of the 15 million. This defies logic and reason: you cannot believe one number but disbelieve the other. And if you decide you disbelieve both (and even say that the 2016 results were false as well), then you’ve got a problem: the powers were different in 2016, but Duterte won anyway. And really, if we cease to believe electoral results, then elections also cease to be an important democratic exercise for you. Turning anarchist is good, if you’re conscious that you’re doing so. Too: if the elections are not credible to you, then there is no reason to engage in it as an exercise.

I’ve said this often enough: choosing to be blind is a terrible thing. Especially when blindness means practically disassociating ourselves with what’s real. And right now what’s real is this: Marcos is President, and he is making very interesting appointments if we’re looking at all. These appointments are also very important, as these people will dictate what kind of leadership we will see the next six years. They are interesting because they are of course more than just people, but what they actually represent.

The strategy is clear in many of these appointments, if only we were looking. (more…)

komentaryo

Robbed #Halalan2022

A little over a week since the May 9 elections, and one understand why those on the side of democracy, Left, Liberal, and civil society, feel like we’ve been robbed.

In that sense, everyone’s performing like victims. Some are raising their fists against the irregularities on election day—dysfunctional vote counting machines, dysfunctional SD cards, long lines because of both, voters disenfranchised. Some have flexed their privilege: not going to help the poor anymore, not going to help nation anymore, bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Some have shot back at actual people who they know voted for Marcos: magbayad kayo ng utang niyo! A day or two after elections, we heard of some small NGOs losing their funders—purportedly, people were not wanting to help the new government at all, and that is equated with not wanting to help the most vulnerable.

Many are spreading all sorts of disinformation about the president-elect, letting this permeate social media accounts in the way that rumors do. It is fueled, shared across platforms, thrown around Viber and messenger GCs for good measure. Never mind fact checking—it always feels good to have our perceptions proven right by any kind of information at all.

But I guess we want to forgive ourselves for these responses? Emotions are high. We thought we were going to win after all—especially if we believed surveys were unreliable. And now we are grasping at straws, picking the stories and narratives that serve our purpose, because it is the only way to keep the fire burning.

But at a time like this one, these responses, public as they are, do nothing but fuel this divide that already exists, a polarization that we now know is really about 14 million vs 31 million. And we need to understand that it doesn’t matter whether or not you think or believe polarization is happening—the fact is, it already is.

(more…)

komentaryo

23 Days: Words, class, final push #Halalan2022

On repeat: I do not think misogyny and the patriarchy are those big ideas that have made this electoral race an uphill climb for VP Leni. That has no basis if one considers the kind of very feminine, very female, very woman empowerment frames that have been created for the women on the Marcos-Duterte side—from Manang Imee to Tita Irene, to Sara Duterte herself. Let me not begin about Liza Araneta, or even their female supporters like Dawn Zulueta. It has even less basis if we consider that throughout the past two years in this pandemic, it is the women in communities that have risen quickly, worked on survival and recovery efforts, taken on more than they usually do. Yes, patriarchy is here. No, it isn’t as simplistic as saying “majority of voters are patriarchal”—like that dictates the numbers we shade on our ballots.

Let’s be clear: there are many reasons why the Robredo-Pangilinan campaign has failed to capture the imagination of the 90% of voters we need to convert. No, the reasons are not as simple as so many 280-character tweets insist it is. This is not about the campaign being “feminine,” nor about the campaign being middle class.

And certainly, the solution is not to make it “more masculine.” These assertions are borne of terrible oversimplifications, i.e., that since Duterte has high-approval ratings, therefore what we need is more masculinity, more military, on VP Leni’s campaign. That fails to consider that the past four years a majority of us—and yes, that cuts across social classes—have grown tired of the militarized governance of Duterte. No, people are not tired of Duterte, but they are at the receiving end of his military and police, so emboldened by having a President who will forgive them anything. To even imagine that any campaign would benefit from being seen with military and police officials at this point, is failing to read the room. (more…)

komentaryo

26 days: Kawomenan sa #Halalan2022 #LetLeniSpeak

I was asked in a women’s month forum about what to do with comments on women being weak leaders, the kind that we encounter on social media when we talk about being on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan in this heavily polarized electoral exercise. The context of course is the notion that we remain a heavily patriarchal society, and as such, there is a basic, illogical, refusal to even consider a woman leader.

My answer was simple: I do not think that VP Leni’s womanhood is what’s being attacked, as much as it is her person. And yes, those can be one and the same, but in this particular case, given propaganda against her that’s run its course the past six years, and has escalated across this campaign, hindi ito tungkol sa pagiging anti-woman, tungkol ito sa pagiging anti-Leni.

This is the same VP Leni that’s been called Leni Lugaw for years, na nag-evolve to Leni Lutang, at nag-evolve to Lenlen nitong nakaraang ilang buwan. These three things are interconnected, and are part of a bigger narrative against VP Leni that the other side has galvanized into massive black propaganda. And sure, Leni Lugaw started with Duterte supporters and propagandists, pero ang matindi sa social media, wala naman nang tumitingin saan nagsimula. Ang lagi lang natin nakikita ay kung ano ang nasa harap natin. Ibig sabihin, sa iba man nagmula ang Leni Lugaw at bagama’t simpleng paninira lang ito noon, iba ang gamit nito sa kasalukuyan ng kampanya. That the other side has been able to evolve it into two different things based solely on the exercise of spreading spliced videos and fake news that frame the vice president as  incompetent and un-presidential—is the success of its campaign strat. They didn’t rest on the laurels of Lugaw, and as that was being turned into a positive, i.e., they shifted quickly to Lutang.  (more…)