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.