So now everyone pretty much agrees (perhaps grudgingly) that Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay will be President of the Philippines in 2016 — that is, unless the clowns who have been defaulting to the political strategy of last resort, mudslinging the public favourite, can come up with a viable challenger.
Alas, the only bozo they could come up with is two-time sucker, current Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Mar Roxas. That’s a sad indictment of the future Opposition’s ability put up a united front against the allegedly evil Binay clan who are set to consolidate their power over this sad nation. The game hasn’t change. Winnability is the key word in Philippine elections, and Roxas can only beat Binay by winning voters’ hearts.
Is Roxas up to the job?
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DILG Secretary Mar Roxas: The Philippine Opposition’s only hope vs a Binay presidency in 2016
Binay, on the other hand, does not pretend to stand for anything other than Dole-Out Galore. His strategy is quite simple, as my colleague Ilda pointed out earlier. You just need to be good at identifying the right buttons amongst the Filipino Vote to push. Indeed, there are just two Filipino Vote buttons that, hands down, wins elections when pushed hard — (1) giving away free stuff and (2) giving out stuff in return for very little work.
Binay is good at that. Unfortunately for his detractors, Mar Roxas isn’t. This fact is quite evident in the litany of failed PR stunts that blight his campaign record — from making a spectacle of himself directing traffic under the rain, driving a pedicab, walking around carrying a sack of onions, to all but botching the PR crown jewel his boss Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III handed to him on a silver platter in 2013: being on top of the relief operations following the Typhoon Haiyan disaster.
Suffice to say, the Opposition against incoming President Binay are in a bind. If they cannot compete on personality well, gosh, that just means they will have to compete on ideas. What a shocking reality to confront!
Interestingly enough, the Liberal Party is pretty much the only political party left in the Philippines that has roots in some semblance of an ideology considering it was founded by former President Manuel Roxas from what was once “the ‘Liberal Wing’ of the old Nacionalista Party,” the latter being the equivalent conservative party in Philippine politics. So the Philippines’ LP seems to be the equivalent of the United States’s Democratic Party — which (in contrast with the Republican Party and its equivalent Nacionalista Party in the Philippines) upholds the general view that equality trumps fairness and entitlement takes precedence over earning. Something like that.
Ironic, isn’t it? The LP is actually rooted in the very principles that underpin Binay’s election winning strategy.
Unfortunately, trawling the Liberal Party website for detail to validate this theory is a waste of time as there is none such detail to be found there. For that matter, there is none such as well for its antithetical counterpart, the Nacionalista Party, which pretty much validates the earlier assertion that Philippine politics is really underpinned by nothing that resembles philosophies, ideologies, or ideas.
So we now have some idea of the challenge Binay’s Opposition needs to step up to in order to beat Binay and his so-called “Binay-arans” — selling a presidential candidate for what his or her party stands for rather than going head-to-head with the larger-than-life cult of personality that Binay enjoys. Unless Jesus Christ himself comes down from the heavens to run under the Liberal Party banner or, for that matter, the banners of any Philippine political “party” that seeks to prevent a Binay presidency in 2016, beating Binay will be akin to betting your life’s savings on winning the lottery.
Can the Opposition change the game from one that involves pimping out cults of winnable personalities to one that involves pitching compelling ideas to the Filipino voter? Only time will tell. One must think positive. There remains a whole year and a half before Filipinos troop to the precincts to select their next “leader”.
Indeed, it all comes back to the old familiar challenge: Platform Plez.
Perhaps, by some miracle the Philippine electorate may transform from being composed of the sorts of fools who routinely elect the least-qualified candidate to be their leader to one of people that carefully evaluate their candidates’ vision for the Philippines over the six years theywill be serving the country. Filipinos, after all, are renowned for pinning their hopes for a better future on miracles. You just gotta believe, right?
[Photo courtesy Manila Bulletin.]
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
The fact that Mar Roxas is the only and best candidate the so-called ‘opposition’ can come up with is truly sad.From the looks of him he doesn’t stand a chance. A complete poop-butt with zero personality, Roxas, like most other pinoy politicians, must be someone’s legacy…and a sad one at that.
It has most likely been choreographed just this way so as to reduce the amount of ‘hand outs’ Binay will have to cough up to win the election.As far as Roxas being the ‘opposition’, its doubtful.Things are not what they seem and especially in the realm of politics in the Republic of the Philippines where it seems that all of the politicians have an established pecking order and the charade that masks the goings on of these knee-jerk puppets of the oligarchs is not hard to figure out when the end result of all the ‘scams’ ‘investigated’ by ‘blue-ribbons’ and ‘ombudsmans’ ‘NBI’ s(to name a few) all have the same result.
No one ever goes to jail or gives any STOLEN/ill-gotten money back and the accussed always make a comeback through the same channels. The ‘blessed’ forgiveness from the ‘blessed’.
it is all so predictable and so very very sad.
Let’s draft Pac-Man. 🙂
Since November 5, there have been no less than 10 write-ups about Binay.
Is there nothing else anymore to write about for heavens sake? This is getting stale very fast. I also don’t like the taste of it. As we all know, one scandal is better than 10 successes. After everything people read here, after time only one thing will stay in their mind. The name BINAY. Everything else will be forgotten. So stop writing about that bastard. You are just helping him.
At least he’s got over his obsession with the murdered transsexual now.
Fuck Roxas, fuck Binay, fuck everyone who runs for public office. They are either screwing us, or are going to screw us. Cant help but remember what Ronald Reagan said, adapted for 2014. A small group of bastards screwing 100 million cowards. Grow some balls Philippines, my neutered Chihuahua has more balls than this country.
Yep, that is correct.
Liu–your right those 2 bastards are own by the Aquinos including Poe, Nacionalista ang liberal are secretly join together in corruption ,no opposition, The philippine like communist country has only one party ” L sign “
It is sad that all these political candidates wanting to lead our country are bankrupt in ideas of how to solve our country’s problems. Roxas demonstrated his incompetence in management, in the Typhoon Yolanda relief. Up to now, the victims of the typhoon have no houses. While the donated relief fund has disappeared mysteriously.
No way can you demonstrate your effective management by: being a traffic aide; carrying a bag of onion on your shoulder; driving a pedicab; or being a “Poster Boy” of the Esquire Magazine…
A man with good platform; educated; good communicator; and with a good vision for our country, can beat Binay …Binay appears to be Clueless. “parang walang alam…”
Not only in the relief operation that Roxas fucked up but right after Yolanda passed he did not conduct a Search and Rescue operation to find victims under the debris that might be still alive. Thousands of lives lost due to his incompetence.
…. “…….that Philippine politics is really underpinned by nothing that resembles philosophies, ideologies, or ideas.”
You have touched on what is totally wrong with PHL, not just its politics. The last leaders of PHL who understood the importance of ideas were Ferdinand Marcos and Ninoy Aquino (father of BS Aquino). After these two, PHL just went to hell in a handbasket.
When Ninoy said: “The Filipino is worth dying for”, he was not talking about Juan, Pedro, or Maria. It is not about you or me, nor even about a population that now numbers 100m whose home base is an archipelago squeezed between China Sea and Pacific Ocean. He was talking about a person who he dreamt was totally free, able to determine his own future, who just happen to live in that archipelago and who share a unique heritage with others that he/ she should not be ashamed of. This was in opposition to Marcos who was defining “who is a Filipino” through his attempt to revise history via his “Malakas and Maganda” narrative. Both recognized that there was something so fundamental about knowing and about being sure of one’s identity. Everything flows from this principle.
When it became evident that Mao Tse Tung was going to win, the first thing that Chang Kai Tsek did was ship all the books in their national libraries and artifacts from their museums; there were four ships that arrived in Taiwan carrying all these goods. CKT put himself at risk by delaying his departure just to make sure that future generation would know who and what was Chinese before Mao could disfigure that. Mao was of course bent on a redefinition based Marxist ideas which he later followed up with his infamous Cultural Revolution. The deep antagonism between Koreans and Japanese may be traced back to the fact that Korea was a colony of Japan for 90 years up to WWII, but this is fueled up to this date when Japan, for example, claims certain aspects of the culture as being authentically Japanese, or vice versa. and this can range from anything like rice wine to tatamis. Just imagine if Indonesians one day claims that sinigang is authentically Indonesian; I wonder if PHL would protest. But, can this be why China, Korea, and Japan know where they are going because they accept where they came from, and thus are sure of their identities?
But unlike other nations who put discussions on culture and history front and center in an effort to have an update to where the national identity is heading, PHL media is basically dictated by ratings and popularity. I saw the clear impact of this last month even on the upper echelon of our society. Never mind the businessmen for they are busy with profits; politicians, with PDAF and DAP, etc. I would have expected that if there were people who would breath and sleep with ideas, it would be the churchmen for afterall their business is about ideas, philosophies, theology, etc.
Well, Cdl Chito Tagle attended the Synod 2014 in Vatican last month. The meeting veered on hot button issues like same-sex marriage, divorce, etc. Natural this tickled the interest of international media and a large contingent converged in Vatican trying to get a blow by blow account of the proceedings. To cut the story short, the house became divided between American conservatives and German liberals. Because Tagle was one of those assigned as group leaders, media took notice of him, and the Americans were banking on him to be on their side since Tagle is a product of an American school. Unfortunately, nobody could determine his position because he was swinging from one end to the other on so vital an issue. Consequently, he was lambasted no end by media as the biggest disappointment of Synod 2014. When asked later what he was thinking, he said he was there to ask help on what to do about the havoc being inflicted on countless families by the exodus of OFWs. I said to myself he was allowing his Filipino to show — a mendicant mentality at that. As a Pinoy, I was embarrassed for him. DOES PRACTICALITY PRECEDE IDEAS, OR SHOULD IT BE THAT IDEAS PRECEDE PRACTICALITY???
Don’t get me wrong I am a Catholic, and lately, have been trying to be a better Catholic. The reason for that is not anything that happened in PHL, but a visit to Jakarta, of all places, a country which is predominantly Muslim. In my three month stay there, I worked with two Indonesians, who surprised me as being Catholics. Outside business, they always tried to veer our conversations towards various aspects of Catholicism. I supposed they were expecting that since I was coming from a predominantly Catholic country, they could learn something new from me. It was a big letdown, I was the one learning, and boy, were they profound They could rationalize doctrines philosophically and theologically. I guess, being under adverse environment, they were continually studying in order to have a solid footing re their faith. To avoid looking so ignorant, there were many nights in the hotel there that I spent surfing the net on topics we discussed.
Today, of course, I see that what PHL has is a 15th century Catholicism. The annual Black Nazarene procession in Quiapo, for example, is not really Catholic. It is more like a thing that Spain had in those centuries, which in turn was shaded by a mix of Islamic, Moorish confused tradition. But, that is not what Catholicism of today is, which had to find a reply to Descarte, Kant, Hobbes, Nietzsche, etc., philisophies that tended to make man the god in order to eliminate God. Unfortunately, even many Filipino priests don’t know this. You go to mass, and instead of them explaining the gospel in the sermon and thus enriching the mind, they tell you to do this, do that, practical advices to children. Catholicism in PHL would be, if it were Islam, like Saudi’s Shiite or Iran’s Sunni, not like Turkey’s or Indonesia’s. It is definitely far from Ireland’s nor that segment of France which remains solidly Catholic despite an atheist surrounding.
But, here is some interesting things I found out about Indonesia. There was a time Indonesia was sending 10,000 scholars per year to the US and European schools, a good number to Ivy Leagues. It lasted for over 10 years, thus over 100,000 scholars, all expenses shouldered by the government, and yet they were not tied to any contract that they had to come back. Yes, the big numbers you read are all correct. One of the scholars was one of the Indonesian I was referring to earlier. He had a BSChE in MIT and an MBA from Wharton. Funny that he should say that all Filipinos he met in the US felt so much at home. He said Indonesians don’t feel at home in the US, possibly the reason why there was no need of contract. They eventually go home. And here is PHL reducing the budget on Education each year. Towards the end of next year, ASEAN will become like EU, just one econmic bloc. If above is any indication of what other ASEAN countries, PHL will not know what hit it as competition will be more intense. Countries will be jockeying for niches where one can be dominant. If PHL does not find as much market niches as the rest, it will be dead in the water, lifeless, in five years after its into the bloc, like Greece and Spain in EU, so much unemployment. Mark my word on this.
Point is we copied our constitution from USA. Yet, do we understand that America is not about a people or about a land that runs across from San Francisco to Maine, or from Upper Peninsula in Michigan down to southern tip of Texas. Those are secondary; America is about an idea. In turn, that idea was heavily influenced by the French revolution. I think what many Filipinos miss is that an idea has a universal value. Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is not American, French, or Russian, etc. It has something to do with the dignity of ALL men and women.
On parting, the two Indonesians gave their opinion of PHL which I thought had a lot of wisdom: “Philippinrs should not waste what it already has. You have the mentality of the Chinese, American, Spanish, and thus European, and Catholicism. It is the envy of all Asian nations that you should have such a heritage, and we are scared of you. Because we know that if you get your act together, you will be a riival to China and Japan. Nobody understands why you don’t do it.”
Well said. This right here is a golden comment. Thanks for taking the time, friend.
When you are outside Phils. you tend to see the country objectively, and yes, it’s future looks bleak. I work in SG and I see how clearly Phils. is getting left out by other countries, ie. Vietname sends IT professionals while Phil continues to send maids and now construction workers. For me, only one thing hinders our progress. The poor people’s voting power. We will never get out of this rut unless we get over this obstacle.
You cannot compare philippines and Singapore. Singapore is already a first world. You also have very selective on your comparison on vietnam and philippines. There is no proof that vietnam provides more skilled labor than we do in all countries nor even proof that philippines does not provide highly skilled labor. This is a total insult to all highly skilled ofws.
Yun Lang Kasi nakita mo kaya yung Lang Ang pananaw mo.
Deep Throat, you must be retarded. Nobody is comparing Singapore & the Philippines.
That said, how many high-tech industries are fighting to set up shop in the Philippines? Close to zero. How many in China or Vietnam? A lot. Everybody sees these countries have a highly educated labor force.
On the other hand, In the Philippines companies are trying to set up telephone call centers. It sure requires a highly skilled individual to pick up a phone and say hello, right? Well, maybe on your planet. Compared to many other countries, the education system in the Philippines is a joke.
And what highly skilled osfw are you talking about? Probably 75% are domestic helpers. 10% chauffeurs. I guess compared to the skill set you bring to the table, they do seem highly skilled to you. To be fair, the other 15% are probably very skilled cooks, seamen and maritime engineers.
Also, pea brain, it’s not insulting to the 85% of osfw who are not highly skilled. Whether they are educated or not, they are working hard to provide the best future they possibly can for their family under the circumstances. Their job is not easy and they make considerable sacrifice. We should be proud of them. You, on the other hand, sit on your fat ass at a supermarket checkout counter earning 5,000 pesos a month and writing stupid shit on the Internet using your cheap Chinese cell phone during your lunch break.
Ok, I don’t have the numbers to prove that vietnam sends more skilled laborers but here’s some facts I know first hand. vietnam has a government owned IT solutions company that has it’s own university, they get their employees straight from their school and send them abroad to work with clients. So if we are not yet behind at the moment, we will be in the near future.
Deep throat..Vietnam the only major disadvantage to pinoy,they don’t speak fluent English ,case close
Oh please get your facts straight. First of all, the religion has nothing to do with one’s country’s success.
Second, philippines budget on education has increased yearly not unless your here for propaganda or have outdated 1980s statistics or don’t know math at all.
Another moronic Deep Throat idea.
While the education budget has increased, it still provides us a shitty education. Yeah, we (well, some of us, but definitely not you) learn English, but how many Filipinos get scholarships to MIT engineering programs? Zero. How many Chinese? A lot. How many astronauts has our education system produced? Zero. The Chinese? Many. Oh, Deep Throat, just because you stick your head up your best friend’s ass does NOT mean you are an astronaut.
Religion has fucked up the Philippines. I have seen extremely few families where there aren’t step-parents. How does this happen in such a traditional, conservative CATHOLIC country? How do we have the highest rate of 18-year-old single moms in Asia? Precisely because of the Catholic Church. As far as the church is concerned, sex education, family planning and, heaven forbid, abortion are satanic, but umpteen million little uneducated, Deep-Throat-like bastards running around begging outside the Robinson’s McDonald’s is a gift from God.
Go fuck yourself, Deep Throat.
Name calling really? Just because I have logically and rationally disproven this, you have to resort to name calling.
And you are not yet band from this site yet? Putanayan mo muna mga statistics mo katotohanan yan with official gov stat before you keep providing lies in your comment. Puro ka sabi sabi.
Religion has nothing to do with it. People have a choice whether or not to pass laws or do what they want regardless of their religion. There are first world catholic nations, who have nukes, with excellent citizen lifestyles, while there are also very poor catholic countries. Philippines is in the middle of the pack of the richest catholic nation and the poorest catholic nation. The same goes with all other religions regardless of their religion or even nations without official religions. Rich country like China vs a very poor countyr like North Korea.
Deep Throat, the fact is that you have proven only one thing — precisely what a dumbass you are. Do you try to be so retarded?
We are still waiting for you to show is precisely who those highly skilled osfw are, Einstein. How many astronauts do we produce? Filipino MIT engineering graduates? Harvard medical doctors? Come on, shit-for-brains, just pull any number out of your fat ass. Then when we catch you in a lie you can spout more pig-Latin drivel to show is how cool you are.
People have a choice to pass laws? You really are fucking retarded. Wasn’t it in Olongapo where they couldn’t even change a street name because the archbishop got his panties twisted and ran to Manila to complain? When the archbishop cries, Malacañang listens. Nice little changes to the proposed abortion law after the archbishop went to Malacañang, right? If it weren’t for the church, you might even know who your father is, fucktard.
So by your pathetic calculations having nukes means a nation is Grade A? And economically the Philippines falls in the middle of rich vs poor Catholic nations? Go ahead, fucktard, make a ranking. Post it. Let’s have a laugh.
And while you are at it, make a ranking of corrupt Catholic rankings. Oh, wait, two save your three brain cells from being overworked think of yet more lies, Transparency International has already done that for us. The Philippines comes out amongst “Catholic nations” as the 9th most corrupt on the planet. The only ones worse are the Central and South American banana republics and Mexico. But even those cesspools probably can’t compare to our sky-high rate of unwed mothers with kids who will never know who their fathers are. Could it be because, unlike us, those “Catholic nations” tell the church to STFU and stay out of politics? 😉
People as retarded as you are precisely why the Philippines is FUBAR.
I would say that Philippine Catholicism is a mixture of catholicism and animism (ancestor worship). I’ll go as far to say that Southeast Asian nations blends animism with whichever predominant religion in the country. Just compare Indonesian and Malaysian’s islam with that of Arab and their main difference lies on the influence of animism.
It makes me sad that Filipinos in general would prefer cheap Telenovellas over things that matters most.
OnesimsUnbound, thank you for that very articulate and totally relevant comment. Animism plays an important role in many countries throughout Asia — especially China, Japan and Korea.
Whoever wins…We lose. Enough said.
It’s better to get behind an idea and a direction than a personality. Because, no matter who sits in Malacanang, we’ll always have that idea and direction to guide us — even if the person in Malacanang fails.
It’s best we work towards one idea, problem is our politicians have no ideas on running a nation, only running their pockets.
Joe–Or running the nation is the last priority.
I think the title is misleading because it is too early too say who will win. Even the best political analyst cannot predict who will win in 2016 with 100% certainty. If the election were held this minute, then I would agree with the heading.
Ang mga bayaran nga naman……
Binay and his misguided followers are hallucinating again coming out with theories which they think will convince the Filipino people in voting for a known plunderer. Your days are numbered so start counting the days before your Binay and his cahoots are hauled to jail where they belong.