The enemy from within
President of this republic has been the target of a well-coordinated media and civil society campaign abroad.
Yet President Rodrigo Roa Duterte remains standing.
With this, it is not the political opposition that needs to be brought to the table.
Inday Sara’s call is in fact better interpreted as a call for unity among his supporters, as well as a call to translate the drums of partisan warfare into a clarion call to move forward and ignore the political noise made by the inconsequential opposition. It is a call for his social media army to unsheathe the sword of cyber-warfare against the irrelevant and immaterial noise created by the anonymous social media army of the yellows. It is an appeal to ignore being baited by the likes of Jover Laurio aka Pinoy Ako Blog.
After all, they are now just a noisy minority. Exposed, delegitimized, rendered vulnerable, and are in fact powerless and humiliated. The once mighty Liberal Party in Congress can acting up, but he is so damaged that he has no audience.
The President has effectively provided the counter-punch to their machinations, not by silencing their dissenting voices, but through con- crete development plans and policy reforms. To Leni Robredo’s incessant passive-aggressive attacks, he delivered something which we Bicolanos have been asking for a long time – the rehabilitation of the rail system that once served as the major artery to and from our region. The threat of a coup is now silenced not only by the promise to increase the salaries of our armed forces and the police, but by the recuperation of the image of our soldiers in the eyes of the people. The victory in Marawi did not just deal a blow to terrorism. It also exalted the worth of our soldiers as integral and valued elements of our nation-building project.
And in response to the criticisms against his war on drugs, the President was humble enough to admit that he underestimated the gravity of the problem as he overestimated the capacity of the Philippine National Police (PNP). He has since recalibrated by suspending Operation Tokhang and shifting the responsibility to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
The President is on a roll despite the political opposition’s machinations.
And he needs a positive wind to
Social media had a very important role to play in the electoral victory of the President. And it certainly had with the forces who wanted to under
But that battle is already won. Pinoy Ako Blog is now rendered just a “has been” who now only seeks attention to keep her alive. Cocoy Dayao is on the run. Silent No More has for all practical purposes been reduced to a mere noise.
Pro-Duterte social media has out-engaged every major media network. We have effectively shifted the epicenter of information away from mainstream towards social, that it is not useful to keep on crying why we are not being covered by TV networks and broadsheets. It is their loss, since if they keep doing this they will forever lose the people as their viewers and readers.
It is in this light that pro-Duterte social media should now consciously from within ourselves. We should not be consumed by hubris. We should not be committing the same mistakes us. We should not turn on each other over petty things. We should not convert our thousands of followers into a fulcrum of power that we use to bully, intimidate and threaten those who do not agree with us.
Sara reminded us of uniting so that we can become agents of change.
And change entails a conscious effort not to become the monsters we fought, and whose remnants we con rebels against elite oligarchic politics.
Otherwise, if we commit the same acts of bullying, and if we abuse our power, then we are not in any way better than them.
after all is not just about “or courage to or empathy not only with those who are like us, but even more with those who are politically different.