Weekly Brief
The journey over the next six years: Filipinos refocus on what really matters to them and not on what matters to a small privileged elite.
In review and in prospect
Filipinos want peace, stability, and, more importantly, to just get on with it. There's a country to build and challenges to face, families to raise and ambitions to realise. They don't want to rock the boat. They want it to sail.
This national aspiration runs counter to what the emergent (or perhaps, more appropriately, remaining) Opposition are inviting the Filipino people to participate in. The Opposition continue to invite Filipinos to a brawl against the government and they incite this by continuously spinning negative narratives around the new government of President-elect Bongbong Marcos. This is really nothing new considering that “laban” (“fight”) has long been the rallying cry of a broad base within the Philippine Opposition led by the Yellowtards (the faction within it rabidly loyal to the Aquino-Cojuangco clan and under which failed presidential candidate Leni Robredo ran in these elections).
Clearly, stability and at least a perception of some semblance of persistent predictability in a nation is important to buoy business optimism which, in turn, makes for an environment that encourages capital investment. Jitters are the enemy of optimism yet it is evident that prominent personalities in the Opposition prefer that a jittery mood prevail — one where every action or event provokes a reactive swing against the government. This they do by politicising just about everything and keeping old wounds open with the aim of fomenting doubt rather than confidence.
The traditional cast of characters that play the protagonists hasn’t changed despite the script having proved to be woefully ineffective at delivering a win to Robredo. To this day, “activists” and “journalists” continue to be made out as the “heroes” in what is essentially an obsolete plot.
They also make selective correlations and dishonestly infer cause-and-effect relationships where none exist. This usually involves mundane situations or incidents that otherwise transcend or are not necessarily attributable to any one president or administration.
This is, after all, an Opposition that did not believe in scientifically-conducted polls and data analyses that spelt doom for their “cause” as early as two to three years ago. Here again we are seeing inferences being made and conclusions being drawn that are not outcomes of modern rational thinking but rather are figments of dreams woven by a stubborn fixation on an emotional narrative that no longer resonates with the broader Filipino public.
Indeed, 31 million Filipino voters (about 60 percent of the electorate) delivered the ultimate validation of the obsolescence of the Yellowtard and communist rhetoric this year. Unfortunately, the international community — particularly its news media establishment — may not be as clued in on the deep truth that the dishonest reign of the Yellowtard and communist narrative over the Philippines’ liberal and progressive political camps has come to an end. This is due, in all ironies, to the fact that, in the bigger scheme of things, the Philippines is really an inconsequential subject. It is an unremarkable country that does not warrant investment in the required resources to check the validity of claims made by the small number of credentialed Filipino “journalists” that most Western news media organisations lazily rely on for information on the Philippines. In his recent article, “Ressa, Coronel spit on our historic elections”, Manila Times columnist Bobi Tiglao observes…
Indeed I realized this when I worked at the Asian-wide Far Eastern Economic Review. Editors in US publications wouldn't spend a penny worth of resources to check on a fact about the Philippines (or similar countries really unimportant to them) written by a reporter. It's too small to care about. If it was about India or Indonesia, maybe they would.
Therein lies what should really matter to Filipinos. The politics Filipinos care about have nothing to do with what are essentially alien notions that are key pillars of the Opposition bukang-bibig — “human rights”, “gender equality”, and “freedom” — that these “journalists” amplify. These are all foreign concepts to most Filipinos. If there is one single lesson from this most recent catastrophic electoral loss the Yellowtards and communists suffered, it is that a campaign and habitual rhetoric peppered with these notions at best simply fly over most Filipinos' heads. These don't fill stomachs or stuff bank accounts. More to the core of what did the Opposition in this year, all that drivel just spells trouble — trouble in the form of idiotic street “activism” and communist terrorism most Filipinos have become weary of. And trouble is the last thing needed when there is a big job ahead to build a nation. Understand that simple fact and you will have 31 million Filipinos joining you in the journey to the future you propose to lead them to.
Last week’s blog posts
June 10, 2022 by Paul Farol
"But now that Mercado is on his way out, the cabal of corrupt players in DPWH is reportedly cozying up to the incoming DPWH secretary."
June 9, 2022 by Paul Farol
"If Tiglao had been appointed as the PCOO Secretary, it would have definitely struck fear in the hearts of BBM’s committed detractors. Angeles on the other hand… hahaha!"
Traditional “journalists”, suck it up: You no longer hold a monopoly over mass communication.
June 6, 2022 by benign0
"Despite the Nazistic manner with which old-school 'journalists' like Locsin protected their lofty place, market forces eventually caught up with them. These elections showed them the stark scorecard — proof that no amount of credentialism can prop up credibility when your time of reckoning has come."