PRESIDENT Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) ruling party’s recent official endorsement of BBM-Sara ticket is an anticipated outcome of the ruling party PDP break up, and the increasing political isolation of PRRD among the ruling elites, the general public and in the international community.
It is a desperate script born out of PRRD and its ruling party’s failure to unify the major elite dynasties for PRRD’s lackey Bong Go and daughter Sara Duterte-Carpio.
It also paved the way for many desperate scripts after they bent on confusing people, the oppositions, bastardizing the electoral system, while reportedly looting government coffers for their various vested activities.
Towards this end, it becomes a frantic script designed to ensure that PRRD will still have someone in power after his term ends in June 2022 to protect him from possible suits against his alleged criminal offenses.
Even its other campaign scripts including the most recent ones Isko-Sara, Ro(bredo)-Sa(ra), Pacquiao-Sara, are all schemed to get more votes, just get more votes the expedient and conscience-less way.
If we examine critically, beyond the ruckus and shallow fun fare of the current electoral campaign, the fight between BBM and Leni, red-green vs pink, lurks the most chilling script of all scripts – the threat of further consolidation of the Marcos-Duterte authoritarian and fascist rule.
The bold and firm declaration of support of PRRD to BBM-Sara ticket is I believe a clear green light to Marcoses and Dutertes to use all their ill-gotten wealth, loot the coffers of the administration to rig their way to victory, and gear the armed might of the state against whoever cross their path.
In fact, the new script is not only about the continuity of their rule, but the scaling up of their rapacity, being contemptuous against the marginalized sectors and progressive organizations, and their brutality in the next six years.
It is no secret that the Duterte administration has been facing countless cases of crimes and abuses against humanity before local and international courts; that it has waged deadly campaign of red tagging and killings of progressive workers and farmers organizations, journalists, broadcasters and bloggers, the lumads, human rights defenders, plain critics of the administration, and the democratic left organizations and alliances.
Like in Negros and Panay region, our kababayans nationwide continue to suffer extra judicial killings and militarization of countryside, workers suffer low wages and lack of security of tenure, land reform is generally a failure due to discrimination and lack of necessary support services, sugar industry growers are now and then hit by the moribund and destructive policies of the SRA and the state, and so the unabated plunder of our natural resources and remaining frontiers, and privatization of vital public utilities by the administration cronies and multinational agro-industrial companies.
General consumers hardly met their basic needs against no let up hikes in prices of basic commodities and services, and the administration policies and actions against pandemic just further impoverished, dislocated and brutalized millions of Filipinos.
The Marcoses and Dutertes have no moral right to remain in power. Their unchanged mindset, agenda and system of governance will never be able to effect new reforms and substantive change. It's simple analytics.
As Albert Einstein once said, “You cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.” In the same breadth, he also said, “it is insanity to repeatedly do the same thing, and still expect different results.”
So if we want a truly substantive and lasting change, it must be based on justice, and this tandem that has brought so much injustice in our land should never be allowed to return to power.
Other presidentiables and vice presidential bets have yet to prove their worth, and credible performance. But we should guard against any hint, tendency, whiff of the same modes of governance demonstrated by the Marcoses and Dutertes, and stop them at the earliest moment using our power of street parliamentary actions.