The ruling Liberal Party is in a serious bind. Regardless of how corrupt the automated voting system has become, the party insists on having an automated presidential election in 2016 at all costs, even without having the corrupt system fixed first. It insists on this precisely because it is in control of the precinct count optical scan or PCOS machine, by means of which Smartmatic and the Commission on Elections rigged the 2010 and 2013 elections, and which makes it certain of “victory,” even without winning any real votes.
But the LP is now, root and branch, buried in corruption, and does not have anyone with acceptable “survey” ratings, which have become the lone loony determinant of who should runor not runin an election. All they have is Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, who once operated all over Mindanao to top the 2004 senatorial elections, but lost badly as vice presidential candidate in the 2010 election, which his standard bearer B. S. Aquino 3rd took, together with his unheralded rival, Jejomar Binay.
Roxas acquired a “franchise” on the 2016 presidential run when he withdrew from the 2010 presidential race in PNoy’s favor and settled for the second slot and lost. Aquino has since tried to give him every opportunity to shine by putting him in charge of government operations in several national disasters. These gave him all the “photo ops” and speaking parts, but he fell inside his mouth every time he spoke, and ended as bad as, if not worse than, the disaster whose after-effects he was supposed to help alleviate. He has lagged behind even in Malacañang’s own bankrolled surveys.
In this country, even exit polls are rigged. Pre-election propaganda “surveys” do not normally measure public opinion about candidates. Instead, they manufacture public opinion in favor of preferred paying candidates. This serves as “guide” to the rotten syndicate at the Comelec on how to fabricate the election results. It is a wicked enterprise. But for all the power and money at his command, Roxas has failed to persuade the most complicit propaganda pollsters to jack up his numbers.
This is probably because all of them find him too deep inside the pit of public perception that they could not risk the last shred of their reputation by giving him a “satisfaction and trust rating” that would be universally ridiculed across the nation. For in all the natural and man-made calamities he was asked to handle, Roxas has not only made an utter fool of himself but also managed to personify the heartlessness of government.
In Zamboanga City, in November 2013, he presided over the destruction of 10,000 poor people’s homes while trying to flush out a couple of hundred MNLF rebels who had come to raise the flag of Mindanao independence. This was the first time anything like it ever happened—-“from General Emilio Aguinaldo’s time to the present,” according to one former AFP Chief of Staff. As secretary of the interior and local government Roxas has no legal authority whatsoever to preside over any military operation of any size. But he took command of the Zamboanga operation of over 10,000 troops, apparently on Aquino’s say-so, while the Army top brass stood by. In Tacloban last year, and in Samar this month, people wondered why they had to deal with someone like Roxas on matters involving their survival.
Given such record, not even those eating out of Malacañang’s hands would dare to prettify Roxas’“ratings.” Even mendacity has its limits; the lie would be so indefensibly and ridiculously obvious, if they crossed those limits. For obvious reasons, the fraudsters are far more accommodating with PNoy. His crimes go far and deep into the substance of our moral and political being, but because they involve serious constitutional and moral issues, they are harder to simplify on Facebook, Twitter, etc. where Mar Roxas’ notorious meltdowns invite instant ridicule.
Just what are these crimes? This is the nth time we shall restate them. These begin with PNoy bribing the members of Congress to impeach and remove Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, using public funds illegally taken from various appropriations and transferred to the Disbursement Acceleration Program, which he created without the authority of Congress, and which the Supreme Court subsequently struck down as unconstitutional.
In its ruling the High Court directed that all those involved in the misuse of the DAP be criminally prosecuted with reasonable dispatch by the prosecutorial organs of the government. But instead of that directive being carried out, the Aquino government simply repeated its crime by railroading its P2.6 trillion 2015 budget. This budget resurrects all the presidential discretionary pork-barrel lump sums, which the Court had voided, and redefines “savings” to allow Aquino to play around “legally” with any appropriation that catches his eye at any time. On top of that, Congress, at Malacañang’s behest, also rammed through without debate a P22.3 billion 2014 “supplemental budget”, which this profligate regime is supposed to exhaust before the yearend.
Obviously, these things never entered the discussions during the “survey,” which gave PNoy a few more points. Neither did anyone discuss the clamor being heard from Luzon through Central Visayas and Mindanao for a regime and systems change, which requires PNoy’s early departure from office. The propaganda pollsters have never tried to explain the basis of the alleged “rise” in his “ratings.” They have not had the heart to tell us that PNoy merely exercised his “option” as the apprentice tyrant who is also related, either by consanguinity or affinity, to some of the central characters behind the two more questionable polling firms.
PNoy’s “ratings” had to be propped up in preparation for the day when he might be compelled to declare that he is the only option left, after JojoBinay’s long running bid shall have been totally destroyed, and Mar Roxas shall have failed to perform even as a simple motorcycle rider on Samar’s wet pavements.
For despite what we had heard from PNoy earlier, he apparently has set no plans for riding into the sunset by 2016. Even some of his closest relatives and friends seem wary of it. One of them has, in fact, proposed that PNoy consider an early exit by seeking political asylum in Johore, where the Sultan is a good friend. But the proponent of this “dumb idea” was promptly rebuked for it.
PNoy needs to believe, and to make the rest of the nation believe, that he still enjoys some measurable public support, even after it’s long gone. And not merely as an ego trip. He needs the reported “surge” in his ratings to create support for any last-minute decision to extend his stay through a “revolutionary government.” A second-term election was earlier mooted, but between now and 2016, there is no longer any time for it. The only option left is a revolutionary government, and PNoy has reportedly not completely ruled it out.
At the same time, despite everything that has been said against it, Mar Roxas is still waiting in the wings to become president at all costs. In an “honest election”, which is now an oxymoron, the man could lose unopposed, according to some critics. But relying on three Ps—“pera, poder at PCOS” (money, power and PCOS)–he seems convinced he will get it. This involves a game, and Sen. Grace Poe Llamanzares, PNoy’s senatorial topnotcher in 2013, who has also entered the “ratings game”, has to be drawn into it.
Grace Poe “won” under PNoy’s infamous 60-30-10 PCOS scheme, by topping the election even in places where they had not heard of her noble qualities. Those qualities have yet to be fully revealed, but she has managed to keep her nose clean, despite the moral and intellectual decomposition and decay of the once noble Senate. Now, she has to be seduced non-amorously into believing that because Mar is not performing as well as she is in the propaganda “surveys,” she has become the LP’s “choice.”
She has been heard to say (quite honestly) that she is not prepared to be president, and is, in fact, still trying to learn the ropes of being a functional member of the Senate. She will probably continue to repeat it. But they will probably tell her that aside from Kit Tatad’s five-year-old grandson who wants to be president, nobody else is prepared, so it really makes no difference at all. They will promise her heaven and earth. And Mar, who has not given up, will have to play possum while his colleagues work on Grace.
If she bites, and they believe she will, they will use her to whittle down Jojo Binay’s hard-earned propaganda ratings to the last digit. Once this is done, and they believe it could be done, Grace Poe’s political engine will suddenly begin to sputter and the promise of heaven and earth will quickly vanish in the air. She will then be left literally holding an empty bag, while the LP herd regroups around Mar.
One could read this as a pure conspiracy theory, if it hasn’t been heard within the Palace. And it has. But although the country is now ruled by men and women without honor or worth, by men and women driven solely by mendacity and greed, there may be one or two within the ruling kleptocracy who cannot seem to abide the planned scenario for Grace.
One is said to have spoken out and suggested that, instead of subjecting her to something as underhanded as this, the neophyte senator be offered the vice-presidential slot right off the bat. They seem to have no awareness of the fact that the Senate has completely lost its worth, as the seedbed of future presidents or vice presidents.
I am not sure how this will change things for Grace Poe and those who want to use her for their own ends. But it promises no change at all in our rotten politics. I believe that instead of allowing herself to be played, Grace Poe should have the courage to tell Malacañang that the nation cannot be more interested in who would be running or not running in the next elections than in whether or not we could finally conduct a truly clean and honest election while PNoy remains in office, and the Comelec, Smartmatic and PCOS remain part of the electoral process.
Indeed, she should have the courage to say that she could not think of herself or any self-respecting Filipino for that matter, running for any office in a rotten election, which is all that PNoy and his party could guarantee the nation and the world.
fstatad@gmail.com
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