Happy times ahead! Former President Gloria Arroyo is now Speaker of the House of Representatives — a triumphant return after almost two decades of unjust persecution. It is not surprising the way the Philippine Opposition under the “leadership” of the Liberal Party (a.k.a. the Yellowtards) are getting all shrill about the return of Arroyo. It is, after all, under her administration that Yellowtardism began to exhibit the now widely-known hollowness of its rhetoric — when the so-called Black and White Movement bubbled up from muck and when Sex Bomb dancers started doing the ocho-ocho in the street rallies that erupted every other week over much of the mid-2000s. This is the period current “senator” Antonio Trillanes put thousands of Filipino lives at risk mounting his media-backed military adventurism and when the late former President Cory Aquino finally ran the EDSA “Revolution” brand aground after backing one “people power” bid too many following a failed bid to impeach Arroyo in 2005.
Following the fiasco of that ill-fated EDSA IV rally led by Cory to protest a House dismissal of the impeachment bid against Arroyo, then Inquirer columnist Amando Doronilla wrote what was essentially a eulogy to EDSA-style “revolutions”…
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One of the ‘truths’ that emerged from the dismissal of the impeachment complaints is that people power has been drained of its mystique as a magic formula to oust much-demonized leaders. The indiscriminate use of people power to overthrow unwanted leaders has drained its potency as a weapon for effecting political change. Its potency has been depleted by frequent use. The sputtering of protests after the House vote should be a rude reality check to Cory Aquino. She has been deserted by people power. And nothing could be more pathetic.
It is interesting to note that the Yellowtards of today continue to fail to learn from that lesson — possibly because they really aren’t amongst the brighter bulbs that light up today’s political discourse.
We see this flat Yellowtard learning curve today again in the way vintage 1980s and mid-2000s terms continue to pepper their rhetoric — “ouster”, “topple”, “dictator”, “laban”, “fight”, and other such ululations. Their response to the glowing reception of the Filipino public to the recent State of the Nation Address (SONA) delivered by President Rodrigo Duterte to joint sessions of Congress has clearly not evolved beyond that all-too-familiar screeching “no other option but to call ‘the people’ onto the streets” rallying cry template. It is a redux of the dramatic temper tantrums and tililing rampages of Yellowtard yore exhibited whenever Philippine “democracy” doesn’t quite yield the outcomes that fit the Yellowtard agenda.
To be fair to the Yellowtards, the shrillness with which they assess the situation today is called for — if you are a Yellowtard. Added to the set of bogeymen the Yellowtards love to hate — Duterte and presumptive vice president Bongbong Marcos — is Arroyo, the object of their decade-long turn-of-the-century “activist” obsession. You just gotta feel for these poor sods. After all that noise, after the Second Aquino Presidency, and, before all that, after their sacred 1986 “people power revolution”, Philippine politics seems to have gravitated back to something that rubs them the wrong way. What it is exactly about a non-Yellowtard regime that rubs Yellowtards the wrong way is no longer as clear-cut as it used to be.
Back in 1986, the Yellowtard possessed an awesome trove of cultural and political capital to unilaterally define for the Filipino what “evil” is. They told Filipinos that the Martial Law “Regime” was an “evil” empire and that the late former President Fedinand Marcos was the Devil himself. To that evil empire and evil emperor they put up their conjugal messiahs the late husband-wife “martyrs” Ninoy and Cory and their choir of angels composed of pretty much anyone who wore the colour yellow. Unfortunately for them, they all but squandered that political capital. Fast forward to today, any further notions of what Yellowtards label as “evil” is now regarded with no more than a grain of salt.
The Dark Lord of the Sith sayeth, the circle is now complete. Several decades of the yellow snowflake experiment in the Philippine setting has failed — or at least fallen out of favour with the popular sentiment. There will be lots of “debate” (as far as what the pointed talking heads of Yellowtardom can muster to meet the true sense of that word) as to what regime is “right” or “wrong”. But democracy, ultimately, is a numbers game where popularity ALWAYS wins. What is popular does not judge what is right, wrong, good, or bad as it is a parameter measured using the cold intellectual tools of statistics. In short, in a democracy, the best most calculating players win. Those who have nothing but puso (“heart”) to bring to the game end up looking like mere chumps.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
They are repeating the same mistakes. All these “opposition” members ever do is whine or hate about Duterte but offer no alternative solutions to our existing problems. Head over to the Philippines subreddit and you’ll see what I mean.
Even just this year let’s look at 3 public protests the yellows have staged and my quick rebuttal :
Rappler- they want it preserved as is despite breaking the law on foreign ownership. They were in clear violation and they made no effort to prove they were compliant.
25 % shading- instructions to cast your vote are clear and posted in both languages in the polling stations yet they will go on record trying to disregard the published and accepted standard. Why would sub par ballots affect one candidate more than other candidate anyway?
Sereno- there was no SALN submitted so she was not kicked out , she was ruled never being legitimate in the first place. So by rule of law she had to vacate the position that she should have never occupied in the first place.
All 3 cases it is not about what is in the rules. It is about what they want. Reminds me of Noynoy’s spoiled brat me me now now outbursts that have nothing to do with procedure and the rules as written. That is why we ended up with his DAP, his BBL and his CyberAct. His scapegoat was set free because there was nothing there and is now speaker . That is why you see a cowering Noynoy the few times the little prince dare venture out of Times Street. With only trolls assigned to GRP to defend him.
The worst sins of the yellowturds are claiming that the pro-Dutertes are happy with the killings that are happening these days. They are simply projecting. They are happy with the killings because it allows them to blame Duterte for it.
Sick basterds they are.
It is now the era, where politicians who are declared as “politically dead” came back to life. The Marcoses are now back , gaining political power little by little. Gloria Arroyo is back at the helm, as House Speaker.
The Aquinos and their YellowTard followers are now slowly fading from the political scene. They were given the chance to show what they can do for our country and for us. Instead, they squandered these opportunities, by serving their self interests and themselves.
This is now the trend of Philippine politics : “politically dead politicians”, being resurrected and coming back from the dead.
Let’s recall how it happened. Remember the Yellows ousted Erap by just letting Arroyo take the oath, and Erap didn’t know it was happening. Arroyo and Cory were allies back then. People need to read back to the article series by Stephanie Dychiu about the Cojuangco-Aquino history. After that Hacienda Luisita massacre in 2004, Arroyo ordered an investigation, and at the end, supported the result: just give the hacienda to the farmers. So Cory hated that and went to Arroyo to verbally tussle with the then-president to defend her prized hacienda, and when she came out, she immediately made Anti-Glorianism her priority. Good thing that 2005 attempt at “People Power” failed, perhaps because of that 2004 massacre. People started to question, why kill farmers just to keep the hacienda, and there you go. The ball started rolling. Although Noynoy became president in 2010, it was just a minority that put him there. Opposition to his ilk all grew until we got Duterte in 2016.
Too bad Cory is not in power when that Hacienda Luisita Massacre happened. One year when she took the oath as president, there’s the Mendiola Massacre and with her media friends on her back, they made it a Martial law clip instead.
Furthermore, even blogger Sass Rogando Sassot is a witness of that tragedy.
No wonder I had the impression before that the Mendiola massacre was under Marcos. Mixing the footage of that with Marcos commentaries seemed like a dirty trick. At least, after some time, we get to know the truth.
The idea that we can somehow escape affecting each other is deeply conservative. Barbarous, even.