Weekly Brief
Over the next 13 weeks we will be seeing how well Leni Robredo leads in a crisis -- a crisis her own campaign finds itself in.
Dear GRP Insiders
How to turn around a broken campaign? This is not a Netflix series that can be gobbled up in one sitting.
Regards,
benign0
In review and in prospect
The Philippine Opposition are in real bad shape. Successive “presidential forums” organised by media personalities and groups seem to have not improved their pitch to the Philippine public. They continue to come across as competing amongst themselves — on TV and off TV — and not against the bigger threat that they all seem to agree is their common “enemy”, administration presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos.
Team Marcos seem to have hit on a simple tactic it is now executing over the remaining few weeks of the campaign — make their candidate inaccessible to his puny rivals while keeping direct channels to his constituents wide open. That's easy in the Age of Social Media and Team Marcos have nailed the technique of working around rather than through Big Corporate Media in its campaign this year.
We called all of this way way back and the history of the Opposition's failure to learn obvious lessons is documented and can be perused on Getrealphilippines.com using the tag Platform Plez which goes way back to 2009 when we first coined the term. The most important lessons were those coming from the catastrophic loss of the Yellowtard coalition Otso Diretso in 2019 when all eight of its senatorial candidates failed to win seats in the Senate.
The other day, we described the basic maths underlying Bongbong Marcos's tactical snub of the KBP 'presidential forum' held last week. The Yellowtards may see this snub as an opportunity to label Marcos a “coward”. In reality, that’s just this inbred community preaching to themselves what groupthink to goosestep to. But don't take our word for it. One of if not the only Opposition “thought leader” who calls it the way we see it is Katrina Stuart-Santiago. In a post on Facebook just the other day, she shares her grim prognosis of the Opposition prospects in the remaining weeks of the campaign…
The Marcos decision to refuse media interviews and debates is premised on something very basic: the success of #Duterte-#Marcos discrediting mainstream media the past six years. Which also means that while it might not fly with us, this refusal to do these interviews/debates, there is a large enough voter base whose minds are made up about the media, and for whom Marcos's refusal makes sense. In that alternative universe, this is all acceptable, and shows his power.
I realize this is difficult to accept, but with 14 weeks to go, this is no time for denial. Paano mo haharapin ang ganyang botante, at paano mo pa mako-convert ang puwede ma-convert? Saka na tayo maging defensive about media and its value (regardless of what YOU believe, after all, it's already been devalued and discredited the past six years, straight to this election season). #Halalan2022
The immediate tactical lessons emerging just last week on top of the years of strategic lessons the Opposition could have applied to their campaign over the last 12 to 18 months is this: Leni Robredo and the other nuisance candidates have been seriously misled by their cronies in the media and “journalism” community into thinking Big Corporate Media is of much consequence in these elections. If Opposition strategists did their jobs and actually bothered to get to know their enemy better, they would have found that they are up against someone who is impervious to the power Big Corporate Media wields against other more conventional politicians.
In the coming 13 weeks, we will see whether top Opposition bet Leni Robredo actually possesses the chops to lead. She can start by leading her own campaign. An imperative to reform an entire campaign in just 13 weeks is a crisis situation. We are now about to see how Robredo performs in a crisis of her own making.
Last week’s blog posts
Politics
The “holy” Opposition say they are battling an “evil” thief. Filipinos don’t give a shit.
February 6, 2022 by benign0
"Bongbong Marcos does not have to campaign any further. The Yellowtards are doing that work for him."
Are the Yellowtards and communists capable of assassinating Bongbong Marcos?
January 30, 2022 benign0
"Put yourself in the shoes of a bunch of people who’ve only known a world that sees them as the 'good guys' and the Marcoses as the bad — no, evil — guys and you could at least begin to understand how so upside down and inside out the world has become for these bozos."
Society
February 2, 2022 by benign0
"Filipinos should 'vote wisely' because, I, Angelica Panganiban, said so. This is basically how the starlet comes across to her audience who, in turn, lap it all up with glee. They are, after all, not called 'fantards' for nothing."
The “wokes”: providing misleading answers to the wrong questions
February 1, 2022 by The Unpopular Opinion
"This lethal concoction of identity politics and cancel culture that the woke movement has been actively involved with seems uncannily similar to this dictatorship of the proletariat that numerous Marxists, leftists, and communists have been proclaiming relentlessly."
Media
February 4, 2022 by benign0
"Would Bongbong Marcos’s presence in the KBP circus have made it a better show? Definitely. These elections are, after all, a race between Marcos and all the rest. A show featuring only one side of the contest quite simply falls flat."