The Opposition is fighting a losing battle – can they STILL win?

The Yellowtards are essentially fighting a losing battle. In fact, they have been for some years now. Their losing streak started in 2016 (or sometime before that), was reaffirmed in 2019, and, in the lead up to today, kept getting validated in survey after survey conducted by reputable polling firms. Being the leading Opposition bloc and with presidential candidate Leni Robredo being seen to being the “leader” of the Philippine Opposition, the Yellowtards need to soldier on — at least because an election won’t be an election unless there is an opposition to the incumbent (even to at least serve as comedy relief). There is, however, change in strategy that needs to be considered when confronting the fact of this losing battle. Often this requires minimising losses. That is, if you can’t win, options need to be explored to reduce the size of your imminent loss.

Even if the Yellowtards “win” in May 2022 they will still lose. This is because the only way they can win is to cut down administration presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos and his running mate vice presidential candidate Sara Duterte from the knees. By the looks of it, the only option available to them to achieve that end is to see their disqualification petition against Marcos succeed. If that succeeds and Robredo manages to win the presidency, they will need to consider the likelihood that, over the next six years, an enormous number of hopping mad pro-Marcos supporters feeling double-deprived will be waiting to “work” with her government. It is also very likely that Robredo’s lack of leadership chops and weak grasp of public administration will be amplified as the pink shade of her honeymoon with the Filipino public fades.

If Marcos and Duterte win in May 2022, the Yellowtards will have the unenviable record of losing three national elections in succession. The brand will be crushed, their ranks and rickety coalitions torn apart by internal strife and finger-pointing, the oligarchs and business interests that bankrolled their campaign will get in bed with the winners, and the communists will be hunkered down even more both literally and figuratively lobbing mortar shells in all directions and at any party they see as not subscribed to their violent ideology. Amid this chaos will be standing the most powerful Philippine government since the 1986 EDSA “revolution”. That initial chaos will therefore not last very long.

We can see here that whatever way things go, the Yellowtards will lose. The only metric that remains for them to ponder is by how much. The size of that measure is one of the few things that still remains within their control. Face is obviously a big deal with the Yellowtards. They stand to lose a lot of it. They will lose their ascendancy as champions of a “democracy” they supposedly “won” against “the dictator” because right before them will be sitting in Malacanang no less than “the dictator’s son” himself. They will lose the lofty place they once held as the very definition of what it means to be a “freedom-loving” Filipino — because a return of a Marcos to Malacanang will be an indictment of this “freedom-loving” narrative that Filipinos will have rejected as a dishonest and empty slogan by then. Control over vital national assets and the business deals that will make — or break — personal and corporate bank accounts will change hands. This will be specially for cases where assets were summarily seized and re-allocated over the three-decade campaign of vindictiveness mounted by the Yellowtards since 1986.

How much of that tidal wave of loss are the Yellowtards even beginning to grasp as their campaign flounders under the weight of bad decisions, bad brand management, bad leadership, inept coalition-buiilding, and the bankruptcy of statesmanship we see today?

The Yellowtards need to start taking stock of the losses they still have time to cut. Perhaps they need to consider carefully Robredo herself. If there is a single big reason why the Opposition had failed to “unite” and continue, even today, to fragment further, it would be Leni Robredo. Her ill-thought-out PR stunts cause excruciating cringe reflexes even amongst her #KakamPink lot. The incoherent position she takes when regarding her future role as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has turned former allies in the Philippines’ communist cadre into sworn enemies. Rather than inspire evangelism in her campaign she induces feelings of superiority, self-righteousness, and elitism amongst her top “influencers” and “thought leaders”. Instead of moving on on the back of a forward-looking platform, she retards the minds of her supporters by keeping them imprisoned in Martial Law Crybabyism and emotionally-blackmails them into fearing a “return to authoritarianism”.

What can the Yellowtards do to cut their losses this late into the campaign? They need to face facts and study the data. What’s the point in having the loyalties of the student bodies of the chichiest Katipunan schools if they cannot apply an intelligent and scientific approach to evaluating how they navigate the intractable situation they find themselves in today? Perhaps they could start by firing the idiots who came up with the sissy Pink brand theme that hobbles Robredo’s campaign today and alienates a Filipino public that, despite what their wokedom like to believe, remain deeply-conservative and barebone-basics-focused. The Ateneo, after all, is blue, La Salle is Green, and UP Diliman is maroon. Which school is pink? Under normal circumstances nobody in their right would deliberately brand themselves pink. Robredo had that effect on a handful of morons. Her only success to date was in the ability of that handful of morons to convince thousands of others to temporarily suspend their natural aversion to the colour.

benign0

benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.