But the combination of a campaign of historical distortion, vote buying, a Duterte-appointed COMELEC, red-tagging and relentless attacks on critics and opposition has created an election result that would bring a Marcos back to
Malacanang 50 years after the declaration of martial law.
My pandemic fatigue and election exhaustion are just too tired.
The Easter Sunday Moreno-Lacson-Gonzales debacle is making it clear to anyone with at least a double-digit IQ who the true candidates of the opposition are, and, incidentally, who is succeeding in convincing the electorate that the right leaders are those who can competently address the many problems of the terrible present and lead this country to a hopeful future. It could be a major turning point in one of the most crucial Philippine elections in decades.
President Duterte has just over a month to go in his six-year term. He could help much in enabling the succeeding administration to resume the GRP-NDFP peace talks, by removing a number of obstacles that his presidency has put in place.
What is behind all these is the unarticulated but nevertheless all-encompassing determination to once more, as during Marcos Sr.’s benighted rule, make the democratization that has been long in coming to this country as difficult if not as impossible of an achievement quite simply because its realization would be contrary to dynastic interests.
If there is any lesson to be drawn from PDP-Laban’s morphing into its very opposite and from the distinct possibility of Mr. Duterte’s eating his own words once he endorses Marcos Jr., it is how totally without principle and self-serving is the ruling elite — the handful of families and their clones that have monopolized political power in this rumored democracy for nearly a hundred years, and for whom changing sides and parties has been as easy as changing clothes, cars, and residences.
Dubbed by the media as the “Batasan 6,” the accused (I was one of them) asked the Supreme Court to throw out the case for lack of probable cause. Meantime, under House protection, they stayed within the premises of the Batasang Pambansa for 71 days and nights, and continued to perform their official duties and functions.
The electoral watchdog Kontra Daya (literally, Against Cheating) has found that seven out of 10 groups running for party-list seats in the House of Representatives are in the hands of far from marginalized and far from voiceless sectors and interests.
Going into his final three months in office, President Duterte apparently realized he was far from achieving another one of his 2016 campaign promises: to achieve peace and end the 50-years-plus armed conflict with the underground Left revolutionary movement.
By ROBERT ELARDO
According to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), there is “no physical shortage” of oil. So, what is happening then? As in the case of major oil price volatilities this century, excessive speculation in the oil derivatives markets is pushing up prices, not the disruptions in oil’s actual or physical trading.