Yellowtard “thought leader” Manuel L Quezon III’s flawed wishful thinking that Duterte’s coalition is self-destructing

Leave it to the desperate traditional Opposition to still be hopeful of a sudden change in fortunes at this late a stage in the lead up to the 2022 national elections. In a post on Facebook, former Undersecretary Manuel L Quezon III (MLQ3) thinks he’s smelling blood much like a shark does going after its prey. MLQ3 suggests that the political camp of President Rodrigo Duterte is imploding as any administration would under its leaders’ missteps and “inability to corral their coalitions”. He is quick to interpret the drama currently engulfing administration party PDP-Laban as its dying pangs and gloating about how “no one expected the ruling coalition to fragment and fight amongst itself like it’s doing now”. This reading too much into events in order to extract “insights” that match his personal bias reveals itself in the incoherence in what MLQ3 writes here…

The only phenomenon more interesting than the current Autumn of the Patriarch, is the seeming (to me, anyway) inability of Ferdinand Jr. to recapture what he lost in 2016 –that aura of looming inevitability– in which the political class seems reluctant to engage him, to the extent that his own sister has been dangling him as a potential veep to Inday Sara –a humiliating recognition of reality which probably has a healthy dose of malicious enjoyment on the part of his sister. Satisfying that may be, it still leaves the various strands of the old Center and Left as outliers.If one looks at public opinion, for the ruling coalition, the worst is over; there is a kind of opening for a [Stockholm] Syndrome to work: having survived, there is a weird solidarity possible to pitch. And plenty of room to pitch more of the same as an antidote to taking a risk.

This is the very definition of a Hail Mary pass in American colloquialism. Which is why other Senator-sharks are joining the feeding-frenzy. One administration supporter echoed his sentiment by tweeting that one bad egg such as Senator Bong Go, in this case, isn’t enough for him to withdraw support from Duterte considering what he has accomplished in five years. MLQ3 is too blinkered by his unchecked personal bias to take into account the “discount” the public is willing to extend to the President considering how former President Noynoy Aquino set the bar so low. This is a fact the Yellowidiots refuse to accept. Like it or not, the images of Yolanda, Mamasapano, and Dengvaxia are still fresh in the public’s mind. Add to that the fiasco Leila De Lima managed to get herself into, the rigged impeachment “trial” of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona, the subsequent Napoles-DAP scandal, and Senators being hauled off to detention after they convicted Corona. The end result is a higher threshold for corruption given the Aquino Cabinet graduated with the President while the Duterte Cabinet is already minus its original appointees.

Then there’s the track record of the Yellowidiots when it comes to prosecuting the Marcos cronies. None, not one of them, landed in jail. Most of them are dead now but they all came back from exile to face the music. Contrast this with former-COMELEC-Chairman-now-fugitive Andy Bautista who remains holed up in the US. Look at the case of former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada who was offered exile but refused. He self-destructed on his own hubris by not living up to his promise to Manileños. Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, Erap couldn’t even defeat Isko Moreno who had the tacit backing of the President when he ran.

The Yellowidiots’ hypocrisy and sense of entitlement always does them in. If MLQ3 smells victory at the polls on May 2022, he’s sorely mistaken. Maybe that will be for the Ping Lacson – Tito Sotto tandem but very likely not for Isko-TBA and Leni-TBA. TBA to be announced.

Ramon Ortoll

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