Marcos Loyalists like @TheaDTan continue to pretend there is no organised demolition campaign against the Dutertes

Diplomats normally pursue peaceful solutions and don’t agitate for war. Does House Speaker Martin Romualdez really want a shooting war to breakout between the US and China over the Philippines? The Marcos Loyalists praise President Bongbong Marcos for his hardline stance on Philippine sovereignty over the so-called disputed areas when this is clearly not the case even if we go by the arbitral tribunal ruling. The Scarborough Shoal was lost because of Uncle Sam through the deal it brokered with China and arbitral tribunal ruling. It also wasn’t included in any of the treaties signed by the United States when the Philippines was still its colony.

So now we have Marcos propagandists calling out the Vice-President to issue a statement with the implication that her silence is tantamount to treason.

Isn’t this a narrow view of a complicated issue? I’m not a stalker or a troll unlike someone who used to listen in quietly when I used to go on Spaces on a regular basis. Now I find out the information I shared was used by said someone for their own benefit later on. If this isn’t intellectual thievery then I don’t know what is. Let’s cut the crap about there not being any organized campaign against the Dutertes because obviously there is. As I keep on repeating, the optics are excellent in the Marcos administration but where is the substance?

For the record, I have also called out the Vice-President for her errors of omission, such as referring to the NPA as the national people’s army in her statement against the resumption of peace talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF. There is also the matter of her obviously reading from the teleprompter which Marcos also does. It’s funny how a propagandist goes to the extent of calling out “Duterte’s trolls'” inability to “elucidate” and understand the “nuances” of her arguments. Pray tell, how can a troll have intellectual depth to begin with? It’s not like any of the loyalist propagandists possess the same.

It’s best that we just stick to the facts. As I’ve pointed out in a separate post, it was former President Rodrigo Duterte who paved Marcos’s path to the presidency. Would Marcos have won by a landslide without a Duterte by his side? This article in a German publication reinforces the claim that victory by “the Marcos, Duterte, Macapagal-Arroyo, and Estrada families, along with their allies” was achieved through a disinformation campaign targeted at the masses.

…the [2022] elections turned into an asymmetric battle dominated by a well-funded machinery of mostly unseen non-traditional actors, but directed by the usual suspects, working since 2015 using new, tech-based and data-driven tools that systematically supplied wholesale disinformation, manipulated public opinion, and quietly perverted everyday narratives accessible to most Filipinos. The disinformation, narratives, and messages of political micro-targeting were eventually refined and sharpened over the six years of the Duterte administration to make the political coalition led by the top families (Marcos, Duterte, Macapagal-Arroyo, and Estrada) the preferred choice of voters.

What it doesn’t take into account is the genuine dissatisfaction of a majority of Filipinos over the administration of the late former President Benigno Aquino III who ran the Yellow brand to the ground over his term of office from 2010 through 2016. The article claims that Marcos is just as “illiberal” as Duterte but lo and behold, he has basically fulfilled the campaign promises of his leftist-liberal opponent. The leadership of the leftist-militant groups don’t even dare mention his name on social media platforms over the enforcement of the final deadline for the public utility vehicles (PUV) modernization which would see the phase-out of the decrepit jeepneys that have been the bane of generations of Filipino commuters. These very same leftist-militant “activists” had long rallied behind the operators and drivers of these affronts to modern public transport.

The same is true with the Yellowidiots. The quote from Hitchens applies to those who are equally noisy but bereft of substance.

You may be successful at creating the illusion but in the end, the truth will always out eventually. Just look at what happened in Ukraine. If you want the Philippines to become the Asian equivalent, I just hope you won’t run and turn tail when the shooting begins.

Ramon Ortoll

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