ABS-CBN supporters are beginning to act like a bunch of terrorists

Now that the non-renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise to broadcast is a done deal, it seems Opposition partisans are at a loss around what to do next. This wholesale vexation in the party ranks illustrates just how thin on substance their platform is. Having made the “plight” of ABS-CBN and a handful of other manufactured pet “issues” cornerstones of their “dissent”, it is hardly surprising to see them now scrounging around for their next “fight” or the next big thing to shore up any semblance of their relevance to ordinary Filipinos.

Filipinos need to remain ever more vigilant. The loss of ABS-CBN evidently hit hard and it seems this is making the Opposition camp desperate.

Recently, there’s been reports of Opposition partisans and “activists” disowning their own parents over ABS-CBN and other such “issues”. Disowning one’s own parents is remarkable in a society such as the Philippines where elders continue to be generally revered and where young people tend to continue living in their parents’ homes well into their 30’s. Thus, choosing politics over one’s own parents is almost cult-like in nature — not too different from the teachings of the original ideologues of communism…

The new ideologues explicitly stated the need to destroy the family. A. M. Kollontay, one of the Communist party’s most active family policy makers, formulated this need in no uncertain terms as far back as 1918: “The family is doomed. It will be destroyed.” N. Bukharin also wrote that “in a Communist society, when private property and oppression of women finally come to an end, so, too, will prostitution and marriage.”

This also likely explains why communists in the Philippines don’t seem to show any form of outrage over the plight of parents who’ve seen their kds recruited into the New People’s Army often never to be seen again. Indeed, again looking back…

…it was Soviet Russia that, for the first time in the history of continental European law, allowed the state on vaguely defined grounds to remove children from their parents. Article 46 of the 1926 Code stated that a court can take children away from their parents “in cases when the parents either fail to carry out or abuse their obligations towards the children, or abuse said children”; when leaving the children in their family is deemed “dangerous,” child protective services can remove the children before any court ruling.

Not only are we seeing the makings of such mind conditioning happening today in pockets of Filipino youth affiliated with today’s Opposition, there is also evidence of more aggressive forms of “activism” — bordering on sedition, even terrorism — brewing across sectors of this disgruntled camp. Just the other night, a “noise barrage” coming from a motorcade of cars honking their horns erupted at the La Vista, Quezon City residence of Party-list Representative for ANAKALUSUGAN Mike Defensor who is seen to be one of the legislators instrumental in the “shutdown” of ABS-CBN. The stunt was reportedly not well-attended but was nonetheless condoned and cheered on by Opposition partisans on social media.

One wonders, however, what these sorts of circuses seek to achieve. So a “noise barrage” transpired. So what?

Evidently, Opposition partisans have lost any ability to form a platform or ideological frame that extends beyond the next “mass action”. Indeed, they don’t even have a plan around how to get the “mass” back into that term seeing how anemic attendance has been in these activities recent years. What is glaringly missing in these preferred approaches to “dissent” is a clear roadmap towards an end that can be achieved within the legal frame and within processes enshrined in existing democratic institutions.

If, for example, the Opposition would really like to “avenge” ABS-CBN in the next national election in 2022, it remains unclear what their approach to winning that election is and, more imporantly, who will lead their bloc to that aspired-for victory. Certainly, stunts like “noise barrages” and mananita rallies offer no clear pathways to electoral victory anymore, yet they continue to subbornly regard these as essential activities in their “activist” arsenal.

A disturbing implication of this baffling fixation on extra-legal means to get things done preferred by the Opposition is that legal pathways as a means to achieving ends are being less and less considered to be viable options as frustration with mounting political losses grows in the Opposition camps. This is an ominous sign and, as mentioned earlier, even more cause for the government and all Filipinos to be vigilant lest dangerous elements foment the sort of instability that could be exploited by the Opposition to do just that.

The case of the ABS-CBN “issue” follows an all-too-familiar template where partisans and “activists” would avidly follow due process then suddenly turn against it when said process yields an outcome they do not like. That kind of selective democratism is the dishonest trademark of today’s Opposition, one, in all ironies, led by a bloc loyal to the Aquino-Cojuangco clan (a.k.a. the Yellowtards) who have long upheld a claim to the 1986 “EDSA Revolution” on the back of which was framed the 1987 Philippine Constitution.

benign0

benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.