Tag Archives: Bongbong Marcos

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…)