All their eggs in one basket. That’s the situation the camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte find themselves in today. They may be numerous (if we rely on the size of their mass protest rallies), perhaps. But the million-dollar question is, how do they turn those numbers into power?
First thing to reflect upon is how members of the camp — and their leaders — identify themselves. This is most evident in the name or label which both Duterte supporters and their detractors alike refer to the camp; i.e., the “Die-hard Duterte Supporters” (DDS). In short, the Duterte camp identify as, well, the Duterte people — not an ideological or principles-based movement but as a personality-based bloc. The trouble with that is, amongst the Duterte family, there really is — or, rather, was — only two viable candidates for some sort of political leadership role: (1) the former president himself and (2) his daughter, current Vice President Sara Duterte.
It seems, this is what puts the Duterte camp in a bind. They lack a bases (such as a clear idea of what they collectively stand for) to extend their scale beyond (and independent of) the Duterte clan. And, more obviously, now that the elder Duterte had all but been checkmated by the government of current President Bongbong Marcos, the DDS are left with only one option for leadership within the tiny frame they define themselves — the VP. Again, another important question: is Vice President Sara Duterte an asset to their cause? The answer to that question was something I explored in my previous article.
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Never mind then all the historical context that led the DDS to this situation today that they continue to harp on. The past is set in stone and the future is what one can control. As such, the more productive focus should be on what to do next given these circumstances.
First thing’s first, elections need to be won. Who will lead the DDS to that electoral victory? Vice President Sara? Perhaps. Who else? Left scratching your head by that last question? That’s what we meant by having all the eggs in one basket.
Do the Dutertes hold a monopoly on delivering what the DDS want to see the Philippines achieve over the next ten years? For that matter what sort of country do the DDS aspire to build over that horizon? Do they even think that far ahead?
If the extent of their imagination cannot go beyond the frame defined by their loyalty to the Duterte clan, then the confronting reality is that the DDS are nothing more than a cult of personality — a community that faces utter collapse without a personality to look up to and to define their lot.
This is the fact the DDS need to confront if they aspire to evolve into a mature political force. The alternative is to face the inevitable descent to oblivion. They need to learn the lessons offered by the catastrophic defeat of the Yellowtard-Communist Axis in 2022 brought about by their inability to find a strong leader to lead them through that “important” election.
who will lead the DDS?
BB fucking M was given the chance, and he squandered it all , just 3 years in, on garden parties and rubbing elbows with low level foreign diplomats and private concerts with duran duran.
the philippines needs to be insular and not pretend to be some hotshot big man country.
leave china alone, tell uncle sam to fuck off, and just mind our own business.
bbm and tibo geodoro and rest of the northern traitors really fucked us big
theyre probably running the country now like tony montana , making “awesome” political chess moves with their noses stuck up in white powder.
who cares about the country? these assholes just want to impress their yankee handlers
Megget is so dedicated trying to mess with Filipino minds. Is somebody pointing a gun to your head that you have to work this hard at typing those silly comments?
The vassals who keep harping about China invading Taiwan look like the ones who have guns pointed to their heads.
china paranoia and looming war in taiwan is nothing but misdirection.
a tired , old, magician’s sleight of hand, just like the imaginary nuclear warheads of baghdad.
why would the chinese, arguably the most intelligent people on earth, wage war on their fellow chinese ? what in all the wisdom of confucius is that bullshit?
with meddling biden and his liberal policy wonks banished from the white house like unwanted mangy dogs, baby M and tibo geodoro have been left high and dry,their langley spook handlers vanished into thin air.
now theyre making things up as they go along, with nothing to guide them but a shit-stained 1980’s procter and gamble sales manual and a toddler’s coloring book edition of Animal Farm.
But Trump sold those amboys F16 jets. From peacefully coexisting to this mess. Now this budol antiwar US prez is sending troops to Iran.
These guys couldn’t survive a single year without bombing or killing people outside their yard.
i wonder which was the trigger word
was it “white powder” or “yankee handler” ?
i bet Baby M is now in his oversized gilded gold walk-in closet, bigger than the average filipino home…he’s looking in the full sized mirror as he practices saying : ” SEY HHELO TO MY LITTLE FRREND ! “
🥱Let me know when you come up with a better script.
Baby M and his “mignons” have a script alright,
taken straight out of :
-the diaries of joseph goebbels
-a filthy college hand book on machiavelli and sun tzu
-an ultimate collection of rob greene quotations from askjeeves.com
-and an old, 1980’s procter and gamble sales manual.
with a few helpings from joma’s bible.
its a stupid script, it sucks ass.
and its about to fail spectacularly.
baby M now in full blown tony montana mode, full blown paranoid, shit-hit-the-fan implosion..
this will end badly for the junior
They really want to kill our farmers.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ExFUx28bST0
The revelations and confessions of former Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol in this interview suggest that former President Duterte isn’t really the tough guy the public have known him to be. He wasn’t really in control when it comes to policy decisions within his cabinet and he allowed himself to be swayed by a favored and more influential camp of his cabinet block pushing for the imposition of both the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB) – to open the Philippine market, the passage of the revised Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), to clip National Food Authority (NFA) supervisory powers and control and to privatize unimpeded importation of imported rice.
Interestingly, Duterte failed to resolve the infighting of cabinet secretaries in his presence during a cabinet meet and relied to his trusted Bong Go to get the secretaries to talk it out for themselves.
In the words of Mr. Piñol, the global market is the thing for the globalist and the neo-colonial economists.
The push for the policy proposal of unimpeded importation (against his proposal of programmed importation), the failure to prevent the passage of the revised RTL (he said he can no longer protect the farmers as Agriculture Secretary), eventual control of the cartels of the rice industry (they can hoard and dictate market prices) led to his eventual resignation.
(Note: Original version of RTL was graduated tariff schedule, meaning tariff will be increased to 180% during harvest season to block the entry of imported rice and to lower tariff (or even zero tariff) during lean months to allow the entry of imported rice.)