Not yet done with Ocho Derecho

READ (somewhere in Facebook) that the 2019 Elections in sum is a lesson on hubris. This of course was directed to the candidates of the Ocho Derecho (and their supporters) who have been described as “tikalon.” Said hubris was due to their hypocrisy as virtue signalers who got support from unregistered millennials living in their bubbles of idealism. They, again, were wiped up because they are nothing but representatives of an elitist democracy, which the masses are tired of since the failed 1986 EDSA People Power.

Here we go again with commentaries that are nothing but verbal attacks. The problem is when people would start to call such as “analysis” rather than “polemics.” Basically the two are not the same. While both are useful in the world of political discourse, it is important that distinction be made else we lose seriousness and sanity in our reading of things.

It is easy to make polemics these days. All you need are some data not necessarily factual nor in total coherence with each other. Just mix this with some hatred and guts and then you will have enough to do verbal gymnastics. For sure the impatient public who are you audience will love to hear the words “Ocho Derecho derecho sa inidoro.”

This kind of thinking presupposes a lot of things that are questionable in the very first place. Is it really the case that the Ocho Derecho lost because they are all “trash?” Are the common explanations of the pro-dutertepolemicists believable? Any answer to this, whether it’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, is debatable but perhaps it would be good to do some exploration.

Bam Aquino, among the Liberal Party candidates, has the closest chance to get into the magic twelve. In fact, at some point in the counting, he was number twelve. If the defeat of the Ocho Derecho is a “protest” against the Aquinos, how would we explain that Bam, who is the only Aquino among the oppositionists, has the highest number of votes?

Another: I really find simplistic those who believe and argue that the Ocho Derecho lost because people are tired of “elitist politics.” Just recently defenders of Bato de la Rosa say that the former PNP chief has a reputable academic achievement. He has a PH.D. (in something) and was a graduate of the Philippine Military Academy. If these are all factual data then Bato in terms of academic credentials is not among the uneducated. He may have projected an image that he is unlike the legally educated such as Chel Diokno and Pilo Hilbay. Truth to tell though, he is closer to them than to unschooled masses that he associates himself with.

And then the apologists of the administration would again sing their favorite chorus: “the people are tired of the Aquinos.” It’s quite incomprehensible that after being tired with the rule of one “family”, still Filipino are not tired with Imee Marcos who is the sister of Bongbong and the daughter of Ferdinand and Imelda. And then we still have a Nancy Binay who is the daughter of Jejomar and sister of Jun-jun all from the Kingdom of Makati. And here’s one more, we have a Cynthia Villar who is the wife of former congressman and then senator Manny Villar who by the way according to Forbes has a net worth of six billion US dollars. Anti-elitism??? So really, what are we protesting against? What “change” do we aspire? What “new morality” do we prefer? What is the reason behind the vote against the Ocho Derecho?

What many have missed or brushed aside in their commentary or analysis is the role of

Duterte as the main agent of power and the powers behind him who are yet to be discovered.* W

HEN it became clear that the opposition had failed to gain even a single Senate seat in last Monday’s midterm elections, three questions surfaced.

First: How do I migrate? Second: What were millions of voters thinking? And third: What happened in those seven hours when the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) transparency server stopped sending results to media and other groups monitoring the election results?

The first question came up first, just minutes after the polling places had closed, and is also the easiest to answer. Search engine trends showed only that more people than usual were searching for or tweeting last Monday night about moving abroad. The reports can’t show intention: whether citizens were searching for or posting about “migration” and “how to migrate” because they were seriously considering it or simply venting. Gallows humor can be therapeutic. It also costs less than actually moving to Canada or New Zealand. It was amusing to see citizens poke fun at themselves for tweeting about migration, when their friends couldn’t even find the time to meet and commiserate over coffee.

The second question is harder. In a campaign when voters had several qualified, intelligent and plunder-free candidates they could have supported, why did millions vote for someone whom the Supreme

Court had ordered to return P124.5 million to the public coffers from which those funds had been drawn? What were 13,442,578 million voters who supported Bong Revilla thinking? And if you think only poor or uneducated voters supported him, look again.

They were referring to American democracy, but something that Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published in 2018 hits a little too close to home. “This is how we tend to think about democracies dying: at the hands of men with guns.” Despite many challenges, democracies in previous years survived because of certain norms, like that of political leaders “resist(ing) the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage.”

What threatens democracies today are far more subtle than men with guns. They include political figures who sow public confusion, who drag critics of the government through costly and demoralizing lawsuits and who use lies, disinformation and propaganda to demonize their political rivals. Some of these figures happen to be political figures we’ve elected. As Levitsky and Ziblatt put it: “Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”

In those seven hours last Monday night when we had no idea who was winning the Senate elections, I resisted the urge to indulge in dramatic, “democracy dies in darkness” speculation. I watched the fifth episode of Game of Thrones again, because a fantasy world that involves two mad queens, a man who knows nothing and a hardworking dragon was a brief but enjoyable escape from all the post-election gloating and grieving on social media.

Now, the Comelec has allowed a citizens’ group to examine the audit logs of its transparency servers. I don’t expect that to change the results or to silence most of the doubts about the integrity of the 2019 elections. I do wish—too late—that Comelec had given the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections access to the data that the group needed for its open election data website. I wish more voters—educated and uneducated alike—had made honesty matter more when they decided whom they would vote for this year.

As for the grief and gloating, I know these will end soon enough, our memories being short and our attentions prone to distraction. There are more important matters to focus on, among them finding allies with whom to watch more closely the events of the next three years and to help ensure that the elections in 2022 proceed as scheduled.*