Dear GRP Insiders,
Keep campaigning harder. Unless there is a breakthrough in terms of any new ground breaking messaging or freshly dug-up scoop about any candidate, that is really all that is left to do.
Regards,
benign0
In review and in prospect
Last week would have been a slow news week if it weren’t for the Russian invasion of Ukraine the latter being not just half a world away but quite removed from the relevance radar of ordinary Filipinos; that is, save, of course, for the matter of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) whose lot ensure the Philippines is always part of the cast of characters of any global flashpoint.
The Opposition are campaigning harder and have pulled in pretty much every resource they could commandeer into their “cause”. Still, none of their antics are particularly newsworthy nor good enough fodder for any commentary of consequence. You can tell by the rather anemic op-ed columns in both the Inquirer and the Manila Times over most of the past week, for example. Not much to work with — nothing new, no innovation in messaging, and no ground-breaking trajectory-shifting developments — and commentary from even the top columnists of mainstream media reflect that.
This week starts with last night’s presidential debates organised by CNN Philippines. It seems administration candidate Bongbong Marcos was right to skip that one.
For starters, CNN Phlippines starlets Pia Hontiveros and Pinky Webb were all armed (literally) and ready to tilt the show to the preferred agenda. They even left a vacant podium intended for Marcos on exhibit despite having been given advanced notice that he would not be attending. Suffice to say, Robredo made good use of the paper and pen provided the candidates for the evening specially considering she was, following most questions, the last to be asked to respond. Many suspect that this was deliberate to go give her time to jot down enough notes to refer to when her turn came.
Will there be any further debates of consequence to be had in the remaining weeks of this campaign? There no longer seems to be any point. Administration vice presidential candidate Sara Duterte had already reportedly declined the one organised by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). Marcos is likely to follow suit. Debates this year are evidently succumbing to the law of diminishing returns specially considering that the administration frontrunners are leading by what are increasingly likely to be insurmountable margins given the little remaining campaign time.
Given the noise being made around these debates on top of what are no more than run-of-the-mill rallies and sorties, the trend over the remaining weeks seems to be a no-brainer. It will be more of the same — only louder and harder.
Last week’s blog posts
The Javiers of Antique: An Example of a Political Spin-Off Franchise Gone Sour
February 28, 2022 Paul Farol
"One would assume that one of the first martyrs of the Aquino regime and one that supposedly helped precipitate the EDSA 1986 revolt would be commemorated by a larger audience instead of being a small poignant family affair."
February 23, 2022 by benign0
"Alampay qualifies his question as a 'serious' one. But the responses it attracted borders on hilarity. The tidal wave of funny responses can only be collectively described as a tidal wave of intellectual dishonesty."