Why the opposition and the rebels will not win
EVEN opposition leader Vice President Leni Robredo admits it.
“The President is still very popular, and the candidates that he will endorse would benefit from the President’s popularity,” she said last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC think-tank.
President Rodrigo Duterte, she added, “is rough, he is raw. He says what he thinks. No holds barred, always for him — until now. And people were attracted to that. … maybe people were tired of, you know, diplomacy and decency that they wanted more authenticity. And they saw it in him.”
So, VP Robredo conceded, the eight Liberal Party (LP) senatorial candidates face a challenging climb in next May’s elections.
In fact, it’s more than just presidential popularity blocking opposition victory. It’s their own failings, now finally coming to light as their past protectors in media and government lose clout or bow out.
Why bring the LP back?
Think about it: Why would the nation bring back to power the LP, whose stalwarts, from former President Benigno Aquino 3rd down, presided over the worst-ever crime, drugs, smuggling, and malversation in Philippine history?
Not to mention such appallingly deadly acts of misgovernance as the rushed and reckless mass vaccination of 830,000 schoolchildren with the Dengvaxia formula still undergoing testing, and the botched Mamasapano raid, which cost the lives of 44 police commandos.
What will LP candidates say when media ask them about the tripling of crime from 324,083 incidents in 2010 to more than a million a year in 2013 and 2014? Or the trebling of smuggling from $7.9 billion in 2009 to $26.6 billion in 2014, based on International Monetary Fund trade statistics?
In Metro Manila campaigning, how will Bam Aquino, Chel Diokno and Erin Tañada, for all their respectable family names and reputable careers, explain the two anomalous Metro Rail Transit 3 maintenance contracts which
brought MRT3 to daily breakdowns, infuriating and endangering millions of commuters?
Will they point to their fellow LP senatoriable Mar Roxas, under whose watch at the Department of Transportation and Communication the first MRT3 contact was negotiated after he let the existing contract nearly lapse, forcing the fast-track deal-making with a firm linked to a party backer?
No, Madame Vice President, don’t blame President Duterte’s popularity for opposition woes, but the anomalies and boondoggles now coming to light, with more scams to emerge now that Aquino’s handpicked Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales is gone from the anti-graft agency.
If it were not for Supreme Court intervention, Morales nearly let Aquino off the hook with the wrist-slapping charge of usurpation of authority she filed over the Mamasapano massacre of Philippine National Police Special Action Force troops.
Now, that the worst debacle in PNP history will get a proper investigation, along with the P147-billion Disbursement Acceleration Program, the largest malversation in Philippine history, in which the Supreme Court itself found that DAP funds were disbursed for programs and projects not covered by budgetary allocations.
And the party behind these record-breaking irregularities think its candidates would win in May if President Duterte were less popular? Get real.
Like the LP, so the CPP
Like the Liberal Party, the rebel Communist Party of the Philippines, its armed wing New People’s Army, and their National Democratic Front affiliate also seek power despite their dismal past soaked in Filipino blood.
Filipinos are supposed to rise up with the CPP-NPA, and propel NDF-backed candidates to Congress and local posts, and for what?
Decades of death and destruction that have achieved nil in social reform. The gross ceasefire violations, including atrocities against civilians, police and soldiers, despite the power-sharing undertaken by President Duterte, with four Cabinet members taken from leftist ranks.
And the top communist leader Jose Maria Sison pontificating from faraway Holland, with not one useful idea for national reform and development.
Only idealistic, inexperienced, and impressionable youths would be lured into this rigid, violent ideology, so it’s no wonder that propaganda and recruiting from universities are longstanding CPP-NPA-NDF tactics.
Many may ask why the red rebellion has lasted for half a century, despite its unworkable and destructive initiatives?
Experts will quickly point to the mass of poverty and injustice, which spawns desperate and angry people drawn into extremist ranks.
Add to that the hardened fighters who find extortion and assassination to be more attractive than honest work in town and country.
Now, with their best chance of getting the most accommodating peace accord, you’d think the reds would be quick to shake the hand and take the deal offered by President Duterte. But Joma thinks he can actually take over the country.
Like yellow, like red.
They should learn from the green: Next year, Mindanao provinces and cities will vote on the Organic Law of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and bring to fruition the new regime sought by the Moro Islamic Liberation Force.
Despite its 11,000 fighters, the largest armed group outside the PNP and the Armed Forces, the MILF decided that Duterte was a man they could make peace with.
Yet the reds and the yellows think they can bring him down, a goal shared by drug lords, criminal syndicates, smugglers, and some misguided Western schemers.
Now, why would Filipinos ever let that band of would-be regime changers win?
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