HOTSPOT
Tonyo Cruz
Supporters of the dictator’s son cannot hide their glee over the recent polls showing their candidate with a commanding lead as the 2022 election campaign starts.
But that’s where the problem begins — not for other candidates but for the frontrunner. He has 80 days to protect his lead.
Is 80 days enough to evade debates, or to skirt from many issues hounding his claims of having the ability, morals or qualifications to be our next president?
Is 80 days enough to cover up the fact that he is not the candidate for change, but that of the ruling coalition, of a family craving for political rehabilitation?
Is 80 days enough for him to focus merely on the monumental failures of the post-EDSA regimes while airbrushing the 14 years of plunder? And what about the former presidents and other leaders backing him up, how would those endorsers figure in his attacks on those regimes that followed his father?
Is 80 days enough to keep the unity within the so-called “Uniteam” when they could not seem to unite around 12 senatorial candidates to campaign alongside with?
Voters meanwhile have 80 more days to make up their mind on who to vote for.
The frontrunner’s vaunted base include huge sections of D and E voters. Would they really vote for someone who has never applied for a job, who never experienced poverty or hardship, whose wealth is of questionable origin, and who reportedly failed to attain a bachelor’s degree even if he had all the means at his disposal to be able to do so? Is he really their final candidate?
In 2016, he was also supposed to be the sure winner. Heck, in 1986, his own father mistakenly thought the same thought too.
In other words, the frontrunner is not impossible to beat.
Vice President Leni Robredo is in a position where she could win the admiration of a public fed up with the political establishment and with the rotten system. It is a public that is resentful not just of the elites. They also resent the educated not because they hate them, but for their role in betrayals and humiliations under regimes past and present.
She has 80 days to claim the banner of change. She has to prove to the working classes that she is their undisputed champion, and not of Big Business. She has to clarify that Gobyernong Tapat is not a mere rehash of the repudiated Daang Matuwid.
Robredo must also find a way to build a political infrastructure to help her and her supporters accomplish an upset on May 9. While it is admirable that she is running as an independent and adopted the color pink — in an apparent attempt to step away from the damaged brand of her original party — that is good optics but may not be enough.
There’s simply no substitute to having a political party backing any candidate. For both Robredo and her supporters, now could be the best time to form a new political party. She could be elected as chair of that party. Her leaders could come out openly and be elected as officers of that party.
To attract broad support, it could and ought to be a party principally devoted to workers, farmers and fisherfolk, professionals, entrepreneurs, LGBTs, national minorities, victims of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations, health care workers and other frontliners. Basically, a party of everyone who stands to gain from change. Change guided by the possible principles of the party: Accountability, social justice, democracy, human rights, rule of law, pro-people development, sovereignty, good governance, and peaceful resolution of conflict. To shake Philippine politics, it must be a party that aims to radically change the rotten political, economic, cultural and social system as demanded by the public.
For Robredo’s supporters, having such a party would promote them from volunteers to party members with an actual voice, role, and stake in the campaign and beyond, including being future candidates.
If that new party builds chapters in most if not all barangays nationwide in 80 days, a victory party could be in sight for Robredo.
Tonyo Cruz
Supporters of the dictator’s son cannot hide their glee over the recent polls showing their candidate with a commanding lead as the 2022 election campaign starts.
But that’s where the problem begins — not for other candidates but for the frontrunner. He has 80 days to protect his lead.
Is 80 days enough to evade debates, or to skirt from many issues hounding his claims of having the ability, morals or qualifications to be our next president?
Is 80 days enough to cover up the fact that he is not the candidate for change, but that of the ruling coalition, of a family craving for political rehabilitation?
Is 80 days enough for him to focus merely on the monumental failures of the post-EDSA regimes while airbrushing the 14 years of plunder? And what about the former presidents and other leaders backing him up, how would those endorsers figure in his attacks on those regimes that followed his father?
Is 80 days enough to keep the unity within the so-called “Uniteam” when they could not seem to unite around 12 senatorial candidates to campaign alongside with?
Voters meanwhile have 80 more days to make up their mind on who to vote for.
The frontrunner’s vaunted base include huge sections of D and E voters. Would they really vote for someone who has never applied for a job, who never experienced poverty or hardship, whose wealth is of questionable origin, and who reportedly failed to attain a bachelor’s degree even if he had all the means at his disposal to be able to do so? Is he really their final candidate?
In 2016, he was also supposed to be the sure winner. Heck, in 1986, his own father mistakenly thought the same thought too.
In other words, the frontrunner is not impossible to beat.
Vice President Leni Robredo is in a position where she could win the admiration of a public fed up with the political establishment and with the rotten system. It is a public that is resentful not just of the elites. They also resent the educated not because they hate them, but for their role in betrayals and humiliations under regimes past and present.
She has 80 days to claim the banner of change. She has to prove to the working classes that she is their undisputed champion, and not of Big Business. She has to clarify that Gobyernong Tapat is not a mere rehash of the repudiated Daang Matuwid.
Robredo must also find a way to build a political infrastructure to help her and her supporters accomplish an upset on May 9. While it is admirable that she is running as an independent and adopted the color pink — in an apparent attempt to step away from the damaged brand of her original party — that is good optics but may not be enough.
There’s simply no substitute to having a political party backing any candidate. For both Robredo and her supporters, now could be the best time to form a new political party. She could be elected as chair of that party. Her leaders could come out openly and be elected as officers of that party.
To attract broad support, it could and ought to be a party principally devoted to workers, farmers and fisherfolk, professionals, entrepreneurs, LGBTs, national minorities, victims of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations, health care workers and other frontliners. Basically, a party of everyone who stands to gain from change. Change guided by the possible principles of the party: Accountability, social justice, democracy, human rights, rule of law, pro-people development, sovereignty, good governance, and peaceful resolution of conflict. To shake Philippine politics, it must be a party that aims to radically change the rotten political, economic, cultural and social system as demanded by the public.
For Robredo’s supporters, having such a party would promote them from volunteers to party members with an actual voice, role, and stake in the campaign and beyond, including being future candidates.
If that new party builds chapters in most if not all barangays nationwide in 80 days, a victory party could be in sight for Robredo.