Tag Archives: Halalan2022

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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State of OUR nation #SONA2021 #Halalan2022

It seems apt that the last State of the Nation Address of the worst, most violent, most incompetent president of our lifetime happened right smack in the middle of a vicious Delta variant that State propaganda denies is spreading, 17 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and government’s failed, unscientific, anti-people response.

It also happened after almost a week of endless rains that have sunk the poorest of our communities in flood waters. Which followed a Taal Volcano eruption that meant whole communities being forced to evacuate. Two days before the SONA, there was a level six earthquake in the wee hours of the morning.

None of these warranted an appearance from this president. Then again, that might have been a good thing: after all he thinks cracking jokes in the middle of a crisis is okay, and he believes that every problem can be solved by police presence—just like he finds comfort in IATF briefings filled with retired military generals who know nothing about science or medicine, pandemic response or public health.

Propaganda lang malakas
In the five years of Duterte the only thing it has maintained, has done well, and has succeeded in is its propaganda machinery. It’s so so good that those of us on the side of democracy like to deny it exists, if not like to deny the kind of power it has. Our denial of course is part of why Duterte has stayed in power despite our anger and disgust, the movements we have fashioned. There is no winning a war we are in denial about. (more…)

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Divided, dispersed, delusional #IndependenceDay2021 #Halalan2022

To say that this year’s Independence Day was the most difficult one to experience would be an understatement. That it was riddled with friends from across the political spectrum sending me messages asking about what the hell is going on, where are we going, what are we doing—asked with equal parts dismay and disgust—is as one expects if you have friends like mine who are not delusional about 2022.

And I do think that there are many many of us who can see what is wrong with what is currently happening on our side of the fence, just as there are many of us who can tell that so far what it’s looking like is that we’re going to repeat the mistakes of 2016 and 2019, where elitism, blindness, divisiveness on our side played a huge part in losing the elections to Duterte and his people.

But 2022 can only be worse. Because we now know that this divide is a huge gaping hole when we consider how it disenfranchises the majority of voters who will—as surveys show—go for other candidates.

We all know by now that we are doomed to repeat things we do not learn from. (more…)

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The propaganda war: Lessons from the ABS-CBN closure

It’s been a year since the ABS-CBN leadership decided to sign off. This was probably it’s only power move throughout the four years that Duterte had vilified them every chance he got, even when he had Gina Lopez as DENR Secretary, and even when ABS had paid up whatever it owed in taxes, and returned the cash the President insisted they owed him for an advertisement that didn’t air during the 2016 presidential campaign. And yes, this was an important power move, considering that all of us were witness to how its main commentators tried their hardest to bite their tongues on live free radio, and how news coverage was less about delivering the news as it was also about making sure not to step on too many toes.

To be fair, this wasn’t just the state of ABS-CBN news and public affairs under Duterte, as it is the state of mainstream media that has the widest coverage across social classes. In a country where a majority are not reading anything written in English, and a majority of those online are on free data, it should be pretty clear by now that for all the hashtags we can get to trend, and all the “unities” we think we’re doing here, we are in an echo chamber like no other. And no, we’re not winning anything in these echo chambers.

Just like we couldn’t win the battle to keep ABS-CBN on air.

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