Think what you may of the administration of President Bongbong Marcos. Whether you are a Dutertard or a Yellowtard, one thing’s certain: the Marcos presidency had single-handedly neutralised two polar camps of rabid cults of personality.
The Yellowtards — worshippers of the clan of accidental “national hero” Ninoy Aquino — are now reduced to a confused lot seeing no choice (thanks to their thought leaders’ deficit of imagination) but to settle into an alliance of convenience with the Marcos family and their extended circle of cronies and clansmen. The Yellowtards after all count amongst their lot the chi chi characters who share country club memberships with chieftains of the ruling clan. They share more common ground with the Marcoses than petty ideological differences can spice over to the point that their now-obsolete shrill spiel of vilifying the “former dictator” is but a quaint historical curiosity.
The Dutertes, for their part, had also been taken for a ride. Former President Rodrigo Duterte helped bury the presidential dad, the “former dictator”, at the hallowed Libingan ng mga Bayani during his administration and then had to step back and watch his daughter, current Vice President Sara Duterte, infuse Marcos Junior’s bid for power in 2022 with their then-potent political capital. All of that capital had since all been squandered by the VP owing to her infantile behaviour over the last couple of years and the abject incompetence of her handlers.
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The Marcos administration is an unabashedly oligarchic regime. Why make being an oligarchy sound like such a bad thing when Filipinos, after all, are comfy with being ruled by oligarchs? In a sense, the Second Marcos regime is authentic in form, messaging, and execution. Filipinos are happy to assume the familiar position to be profited off from and an unapologetically-oligarchic regime is happy to oblige and make a song and dance about its privileged place in society. Good optics, an entertained public, and money sloshing around the economy. It’s a win-win situation!
Philippine politics has never been in such authentic form since the “former dictator” was “ousted” in a “people power revolution” in 1986. It’s come full circle and settled back into its natural feudal state of willing sheep moving to the beat set by shrewd politico-entrepreneurs. To be fair it is all the same, except that pretending to be altruistic “revolutionaries” or “reformists” no longer works like the proverbial sheep’s clothing once did for would-be oppositionists.
The self-described “radical chick” Katrina Stuart-Santiago, one of the more sound of mind of the “thought leaders” of the Yellowtard-Communist Axis handily articulates the ideological conundrum her camp find themselves in these days — being in an uncomfortable bed with the Son of the Dictator — in her piece, “How are we under this Marcos presidency?”…
Is this a swing to BBM? It is not. It is an acknowledgment that right here, right now, we are taking our time in figuring out what to do next. It is an acknowledgment of this particular period, when many of us might be saying quietly to the people we trust: this feels more like a PNoy presidency than anything else.
Yes, neo-liberal policies and American loyalty included; yes, only-son-swagger and all-boys-school breeding included. The difference of course is that while PNoy’s government layered this with elitism, BBM’s leadership is devoid of the same. Instead, there is good ol’ Marcos mass appeal. There is a rhetoric that speaks to the masses, cutting across the Presidency to the presidential sister in the Senate; there are visits to communities in need, giveaways of land titles, ayuda at scale. There is also arts and culture, Malacañang concerts and free puto-bongbong at simbang gabi. There is content and propaganda showing him in his pambahay, eating Jollibee. There are welcome ambush interviews with media, and there is a sense of humor.
It remains to be seen, however, whether that respite and space to think that Stuart-Santiago imagines as an opportunity presented by the Second Marcos Regime to her people to “to try and affect electoral outcomes” will actually translate to said hoped-for outcomes. Space to think, after all, does not necessarily foment substantial thinking in Philippine society much less its stunted politics.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
The Yellowtards chooses to be “in an uncomfortable bed with the Son of the Dictator”, taking their time for that opportunity to present itself again, while the other camp of the Dutertards are running impatient trying everything in their book to regain former glory but still relying in that old Duterte magic that had since gone passe.
Both camps had their time and it isn’t that bad, that, while they’re at it, they can productively choose to participate to help bring the country forward.
This should be shared: a powerful speech from an un-identified African man delivering a very powerful message akin to the tradition here in GRP that might force people to re-think and re-examine their customary loyalty to a cult of personality.