Filipino voters are just so done over by those “helping the poor” ululations that pepper today’s “activist” rhetoric. This is the big lesson the Philippine Opposition need to learn if they are to win in 2022. That sort of rhetoric is simply not consistent with the way Philippine society is structured. You can see it most starkly in the way the rich cloister themselves within fortified residential enclaves patrolled by private armies. That reality does not sit well when one considers that the most chi chi “thought leaders” of wokedom grew up — and continue to tap their “activist” slogans into their 1000-dollar iPads — within those very walls. The sight of this private school set pontificating about the “plight” of the “poor” is quite rich indeed. Literally.
This pretty much illustrates the crisis of relevance the Opposition suffers today. They foolishly built their entire political brand on “helping the poor”. No less than their default “leader” of the moment, “vice president” Leni Robredo, had channelled most of her media mileage expenditure to publicity stunts that aim to showcase her “helping the poor” initiatives. Suffice to say, all of these PR stunts fell flat on their faces. Many have backfired badly thanks to the silly grin Robredo habitually sports while inserting herself in the midst of otherwise grim situations. For that matter, many of these supposedly “grim” situations were only made to look so on the back of the million-peso creative license Robredo’s army of consultants apply to these PR jobs.
Leni Robredo has a track record of using ‘public service’ as a dishonest means to promote herself.
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Looking further back, this was also the same idiotic approach that resulted in then presidential candidate Mar Roxas copping derision and ridicule from across a big swathe of the partisan spectrum. Roxas, like Robredo, amassed a trove of “helping the poor” collateral owing to a similarly tone-deaf PR team. Photos and videos of Roxas doing masa stuff like carrying a sack of onions on his shoulder, directing traffic in the rain, and doing carpentry work on school desks set social media on fire in the Philippines — in all the wrong ways. This poor form carried over to poor poll results, all but paving the way for a landslide victory in 2016 for current President Rodrigo Duterte.
Mar Roxas’s botched PR jobs spawned an entire meme production industry.
The message is clear — or, more importantly, should have been clear — to the powers-that-be of the Philippine Opposition:
Poverty porn no longer works.
That’s bad news for the Opposition. The Yellowtards (the biggest bloc within the opposition consisting of chi chi members rabidly-loyal to the Aquinio-Cojuangco clan) and the communists (consisting of the most militant and most violent of its members) set the themes and lead the thinking that define the Philippine Opposition today. Both sport ideologies built on the back of doctrines that frame the the poor as “victims” of “sinister” and “reactionary” state forces. Presented this way with the state and government always portrayed as the bad guys, the Yellowtards and communists are at liberty to espouse and justify illegal means of acquiring power — the Yellowtards with their “people power” street “revolution” (fancy words for coup d’état) and the communists with their “people’s revolution” that aims to install their dreaded “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
Communist ‘combatants’ routinely display their terrorist activities with impunity.
Those notions are now all but obsolete yet the Opposition stubbornly adhere to them — and remain beholden to the personalities behind them — despite suffering no less than two catastrophic national election defeats in 2016 and 2019. You wonder then: Do Filipinos really deserve the idiocy that today’s Opposition habitually exhibit? Definitely not. A modern and intelligent Opposition is essential to the modern, stable, and healthy democracy that Filipinos aspire to. An Opposition led by the Yellowtards and communists is anything but any of that. It’s time Filipinos put their foot down and demand that their Opposition ditch all that baggage and step up to be the Opposition Filipinos deserve. The next elections are just around the corner. The clock is ticking fast.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Poverty porn works in Vlogging.
Vlog about helping poor = views
Don’t believe me? Watch Ivana’s latest vlog. Also check out Hungry Syrian Wanderer.
@Jolog2021
Ang kapal ng mukha mo. Mas marami pang tulong ang ginagawa ni Ivana at Basel sa vlog nila kay sa buong buhay mo. Habang tumutulong sila sa mahihirap ano naman ang ginagawa mo? Puro pintas ka lang. Tumahimik ka na lang kung wala kang tulong na gagawin sa ating mga kababayan na naghihirap ngayon.
Another foreigner exposed Basel. He’s a scammer and doesn’t treat his employees off camera with better pay. Irony. Sheesh, do you believe everything these “vloggers” show? Wow, incredibly dense and naive.
Isa ka pa. Puro pintas pero wala naman ginagawang tulong para sa mahira. Napakabait po ni Basel at ang dami na niyang nabigyan ng tulong. Kung hindi ka naniniwala, panoorin mo ang mga vlogs niya.
Kung meron kang ebidensiya na hindi siya ganito off-camera, ipakita mo ito. Hindi ebidensiya ang chismiss lang, lalo na kapag marami siyang vlog na ipinapikita ang kabaitan niya!
Matthew 6:2
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full”
Who cares?
lol at any of those candidates having a chance. If you are not going to continue the progress and run on “democracy” and “justice” that is not going to work. Those are things the country doesn’t need.
I hate nepotism, but it looks like the main hope is Sara.
Pacquiao has had zero success with any business he has tried to run (multiple failures, the MPBL being his most recent). Imagine him running the government… lol
He would seriously fail.
Any Marcos would be terrible. If you are truly stupid enough to vote for the kid of a lady who wasted millions/billions of dollars of the country’s money (and hasn’t called out those wasted funds)… I can’t help you.
I like Richard Gomez and he seems like a good mayor (took out a corrupt family that had been in charge of the town for like 30 years…), but his ABS-CBN connection could be troubling. Last thing the country needs is that channel back with more power giving their idiotic/moronic shows to the populace.
Hopefully someone else emerges in the same fashion a Duterte did, and promotes his same policies and is still pushing corruption. I would love to hear the same rhetoric (Duterte said to pour gasoline on a drug dealer). I would love the next person to say to pour the gasoline on a corrupt government official.
I also like Richard Gomez. The ABS-CBN connection is a good thing. Maybe Goma can finally bring ABS-CBN back on air because this is the right thing to do. ABS-CBN has done nothing but serve the public. It was only shut down because it was brave enough to speak against the evil people now running this country.
Duterte emerged out of the woodwork coming out of nowhere to seize Imperial Manila back in 2016. Filipinos were looking for a leader represented by a camp that had none of the traditional political baggage. Would be good if another such candidate came up. However, there is also the thing about political maturity. At some point, there should be stability in the landscape of political parties and elections should not forever be about surprise or dark-horse candidates.
The “poor among us” are used as a “political tool” to win elections. In truth, after election, the “poor among us” are never mentioned again, until the next election.
Politicians who are mostly rich people; use the “political
fishing hook” : “helping the poor” to get our votes.
If you are that kind of stupid person: you will bite the “political fishing hook” !!!
If you mean the solution should go beyond giving ‘ayuda’ or the small time capitalism/ puhunan, then you have a point. Again, if that’s what you mean.
“para sa mga mahihirap”, “kakampi kami ng mga mahihirap”, “we are pro-poor” and so on are really overused words of trapos(traditional politicians).
Dirty politics shouldn’t corrupt people’s will to do good. Campaign platforms must be clear and definite instead. But yes, platforms can seem obsolete when people are no longer convinced because of a bunch of unreliable, recycled personalities.