Category: 2022 elections

The awesome thoroughness of Marcos brainwashing ops

Published by Ellen on June 24, 2022

Amidst the preparations for the June 30 inauguration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as the 17th president of the Philippines, I’m still dreadfully in awe of the thoroughness of the brainwashing operations that the Marcos family undertook to achieve their rehabilitation in less than four decades.

Historian and political analyst Manuel L. Quezon III shared in a talk with VERA Files how meticulous the rehabilitation process was. We all blame social media which the Marcoses have mastered but Quezon said their analog or non-digital work was as amazing.

“Yung favorite example ko yung mga ginawang writing exercise book na pinamimigay sa mga Grade 2 or Grade 3 ba yun so di ba kokopyahin mo yung sentence para matuto ka magsulat at ang mga example na kokopyahin ng mga bata ‘Ferdinand Marcos was the greatest president ever’ or ‘ no one loved the Philippines more than Ferdinand Marcos.’ Ganung klaseng brainwashing. Di ba analog yun libro.”

(My favorite example is the writing exercise they did for Grade 2 or Grade 3, where you copy a sentence for you to learn how to write and the examples that the children copies was “Ferdinand Marcos was the greatest president ever” or “No one loved the Philippines more than Ferdinand Marcos.” That’s the kind of brainwashing. Book are analog, aren’t they.)

Why we have to learn the art of listening and discerning

Published by Ellen on May 31, 2022

Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. being interviewed by Lizzie Lazo of Times Journal and Restry de Quiroz Jr. of DZRH. To Bongbong Marcos’ left is Cookie Micaller of Jiji Press.

In his insightful piece in Time Magazine on the election as president of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the ousted dictator, scholar Jonathan Ong said: “To fight back, progressive leaders should advance their own counter-narrative and persuasive vision. But first, they must acknowledge their failure to listen.”

I recall my interview with Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, who lost to Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio in the vice-presidential contest in the recently concluded election, a few weeks before the 2019 midterm election.

I asked Pangilinan, who was then the campaign manager of the Liberal Party-led coalition, what lessons have they learned in the 2016 elections when their candidate, investment banker Mar Roxas, was resoundingly trounced by the foul-mouth Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte despite their being considered then as the incumbent administration’s ticket.

Pangilinan replied: “We didn’t listen to what the people wanted. We told them what we wanted to do for them. We didn’t ask what they wanted.”
He said that’s what they were doing in the 2019 campaign; they asked the people what they wanted. The interview took place about a month before Election Day.

Comelec quick response foils site-hacking report from becoming a problem

Published by Ellen on January 11, 2022

So many things were not quite right in the Manila Bulletin news report about the alleged hacking of the Commission on Election (Comelec) website. The quick response from Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez foiled further spread of that suspicious report.

Jimenez took the bull by its horn, a valuable lesson not only in fighting disinformation but also in preventing something from becoming a problem, or a crisis.

The report came to our attention late afternoon of Monday, Jan. 10. It said “sensitive voter information may have been compromised after a group of hackers was allegedly able to breach the servers of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), downloading more than 60 gigabytes of data that could possibly affect the May 2022 elections.”

Is Bongbong Marcos peaking too early?

Published by Ellen on January 6, 2022

Latest election surveys showed that if elections were held today, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. would be the 17th president of the Republic of the Philippines.

It’s a nightmare in the making for those who have experienced the horrors of martial law and those who know how democracy was distorted and crushed during the Marcos authoritarian regime. Will the 50th year of the declaration of martial law on Sept. 21, 2022 be declared a national holiday by the Philippine president by then, the son and namesake of the man who signed Proclamation 1081 two days prior to its announcement, asked JB Baylon, columnist of Malaya Business Insight and VERA Files.

Pulse Asia’s December 2021 nationwide survey showed Marcos Jr. was the choice of 53% of Filipinos if elections were held now. Other candidates trail behind, with Leni Robredo, the political opposition’s muse, as the choice of 20% of the respondents; Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso, 8%; boxing legend and Sen. Manny Pacquiao, 8%; and, Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, 6%.

Never has a candidate in the post-1986 people power revolution elections reached that high number consistently in pre-election surveys. Not even Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, who was catapulted into the 2010 presidential race by the massive public sympathy over his mother’s death a few months earlier. He led in all the poll surveys at 40-plus percent, never reaching 50%.

Bobby Romulo’s urgent appeal goes viral

Published by Ellen on July 11, 2021

Former foreign secretary Roberto R. Romulo is supposed to take things easy for health reasons. He has even suspended his columns in Philippine Star until November. But he just had to send out an urgent appeal to his fellow members of the business community. And he was surprised by the reactions.

The appeal has gone viral. Someone translated it to Tagalog and Cebuano.

As expected, it has elicited the ire of Duterte fanatics.

Read what Romulo has written:

Pacquiao is hindrance to Duterte’s staying in power beyond June 2022

Published by Ellen on July 4, 2021

President Duterte attended Sen.Manny Pacquiao’s 38th birthday celebration in General Santos on Dec. 17, 2018. Malacanang photo by Richard Madelo.

Boxing champ and Sen. Manny Pacquiao and President Rodrigo Duterte used to be allies.

Despite his being a born-again Christian, Pacquiao did not condemn the extra-judicial killings that became a daily occurrence as Duterte waged his war on drugs. He supported Duterte’s initiative to re-impose death penalty. He voted for the abhorrent anti-terror law.

He was silent when former senator Antonio Trillanes IV exposed Duterte’s bank deposits in hundreds of millions of pesos in 2016 which remain unexplained up to now.

Now, he talks about corruption in the Duterte government.

Sara Duterte plays ‘jele jele bago quiere’

Published by Ellen on February 8, 2021

Sara does the traditional “mano po” to her father, President Dutere. Malacanang photo.

The title of this column is borrowed from Jose Rizal’s masterpiece, Noli Me Tangere, which historian Ambeth Ocampo best explained in his 2016 opinion piece to mean “one is pretending not to appear interested in something, though in reality one is desperate to have it.”

In just two weeks, the response of Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte, to groups urging her to run for president next year has changed drastically. On Jan. 15, she said: “I am not being coy nor am I doing a last minute. If the whole country doesn’t want to believe that, then I can’t do anything about it. Not everyone wants to be president. I am one of them.” On Jan. 31, she was singing a different tune, saying she was willing to run if the opposition supports her.

This was how news reports quoted Duterte-Carpio as saying when asked to comment on the “Run, Sara, Run” activities: “I am always grateful that I have their trust and confidence. I am pleading to them to please allow me to run for President on 2034, if at that time there is something I can do to help the country. Thank you.”

Cha-Cha revival betrays Duterte’s desperation

Published by Ellen on January 17, 2021

Listening to President Duterte say that he is not interested in staying beyond June 30, 2022 reminds us of his denials about running for president in 2016. He didn’t even file his certificate of candidacy before the deadline set by the Commission on Elections, remember? He had to go through all the drama of substitution.

The proponents behind the renewed efforts for Charter Change in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are his minions. Would anyone believe that House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco and Senators Ronald de la Rosa and Francis Tolentino would do anything as serious as changing the Constitution without their Master’s imprimatur?

No to Mikey Arroyo’s not-so-bright idea of postponing 2022 elections

Published by Ellen on September 27, 2020

Preparations for the 2022 elections have started.

Mikey Arroyo, son of former president Gloria Arroyo, is seldom heard since his mother left Malacañang in 2010. Currently a member of the House of Representatives representing the second district of Pampanga, Mikey Arroyo said something dumb last week, it became news.

At the House deliberations on the proposed 2021 budget of the Commission on Elections Thursday, Arroyo floated the idea of postponing the May 9, 2022 elections if the Covid-19 continues to be a threat to the public by that time.

Arroyo said he has been reading a lot about the Covid-19 pandemic and he asked the Comelec officials: “Assuming for the sake of argument that nothing goes wrong, the earliest that the vaccine will be available in our country for everybody, maybe September or October next year. The thought that we will postpone the elections, has that ever triggered in your mind?”