THE fanatics among their ranks — cultists would be a more
accurate term — will of course never get out of their delusion that Leni
Robredo has started a "Pink movement," or as the craziest among
them has claimed, a "New Pink Army," a play on the once-dreaded
communist-led New People's Army.
But Robredo is history. She'll vanish in a few months, just as a
more formidable but losing candidate, Mar Roxas, did.
 |
| (Editorial cartoon from Daily Tribune) |
The only "tsunami" of volunteers was in Facebook posts
claiming there was. Former super-yellow senator Sergio Osmeña 3rd revealed what
most people suspected as he couldn't help boasting, and told the New York Times
that he "paid for 10,000 volunteers."
Osmeña and the likes of him certainly wouldn't pay for
"volunteers" for the vaguest of objectives as Robredo's "Angat
Buhay" NGO, unless she packages it in a way that would interest the
CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy (Rappler and VERA Files
funders) enough to fund it.
In
the first place, Robredo, with her Alfred Neuman smile (of Mad magazine fame) was completely out of
her league. She never had the qualifications — both the intellectual qualities
and political savvy — to be president, as her stint as House representative and
vice president obviously had shown. The Yellows though could not get anybody
else to be their presidential candidate.
The Pinks remind me of the Progressive Party of the
Philippines, led by Raul Manglapus, which, as in the case of Robredo, the
Jesuits especially and the Catholic Church pushed for, and the
"disente" elites, which I rooted for when I was in high school.
I bet you haven't heard of it. The presidential bid in 1965 of
Manglapus — who was a hundred times more eloquent and intelligent than Robredo
— failed miserably. It got only 5 percent of the vote, with Ferdinand
Marcos getting 52 percent and Gerardo Roxas getting 43 percent.
It disappeared just a few months after, as the Pinks will.
31 million
Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (BBM) got
31 million, or 59 percent of the votes, certainly a landslide victory. Data in
a survey undertaken by Laylo Research show that 55 percent of BBM voters are
"hard voters," i.e., those who would not change their minds in
choosing him — i.e., his hardcore followers. This means a solid base of 17
million potential cadres.
By comparison and using the same methodology, Robredo would have
only 2 million — but who I think at most are the types whose political
participation does not go beyond electoral episodes.
Most Filipinos aren't really partisans, in contrast to Americans
who would identify themselves as members either of the Democratic Party or
Republican Party. Most of those who voted for Leni will be patriots, who would
now be hoping that the BBM presidency succeeds which success after all means
the upliftment of Filipinos' well-being. This doesn't of course include the
Reds, who have since the 1960s opposed all administrations, and tried to bring
them down, in the hope that they could grab power.
But after all, the number
of people who voted for the Reds' candidate Leody de Guzman is just 94,000 — which I think is a liberal
estimation of the Communist Party's
active members and activists. The Reds fared very poorly in the party-list
elections. Only Gabriela — which is known more as a women's movement rather
than a "national-democratic" (i.e., Red) organization — will be
winning a seat. The people have rejected its once mighty Bayan Muna and
Anakpawis.
Now look at the Senate. All except Risa Hontiveros were
either endorsed by BBM, President Duterte or both. Hontiveros has become a
political orphan, as her party Akbayan couldn't even run as a party-list.
Including Hontiveros, there are now only four among the 24
senators who are not under the Marcos-Duterte wing: Koko Pimentel, Grace
Poe and Nancy Binay, the latter two not even known to be anti-Marcos
persons.
While I am unable still to make a count, I was told that only a
tenth — at most — of the winning Congress representatives are from the
opposition — and the lower House of course is populated mostly by politicians
who would kowtow immediately to the incumbent president.
With his appointment to the Supreme Court of Court of Appeals
judge Maria Filomena Singh, Duterte has appointed 13 of the 15 high
tribunal justices, the biggest number of sitting justices ever appointed by a
single president. While they of course are not beholden to BBM, their political
beliefs are certainly not that of the Yellows or the Pinks, or else the
politically astute Duterte would not have appointed them.
Hegemon
In short, with a feeble an outfit as the really ephemeral
"Pinks" and the tiny CPP, the BBM-Sara Duterte tandem is the most
powerful political hegemon in this country now.
With its formidable power, I would think its main,
immediate task — to strike while the iron is still hot, as the cliché goes —
should be the total destruction of the Reds, a task BBM's father set out to do,
but failed, ironically because he wasn't as ruthless as other heads of
countries were.
However, while reduced to a tiny group now, the
Communist Party controls key institutions positioned to broadcast its views way
beyond its actual strength, such as media, a major faction of the Catholic
Church and the universities, especially UP, the Ateneo and La Salle.
Other countries —
Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Indonesia — decades ago wiped
out their communist scourges. What his father failed to do, BBM must
accomplish: to destroy the CPP completely and grind it to fine dust. If he
accomplishes only that, he will be viewed as one of our best presidents ever.
Quoted
fully from Mr. Rigoberto Tiglao’s column
The
Manila Times
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