The Opposition’s “thought leaders” are, yet again, getting all their panties twisted, this time over an online poll conducted by Assistant Secretary for Social Media Mocha Uson. In a survey posted on Facebook, Uson asked her followers, “Naniniwala ba kayo na ang 1986 EDSA PEOPLE POWER ay isang produkto ng FAKE NEWS???” (Translated: “Do you believe that the 1986 EDSA People Power [Revolution] is a product of fake news???”).
As of this writing, at least 61,800 Facebook users responded to the poll with more than 84 percent of them casting a “Yes” vote and, as such, agreeing that the EDSA “revolution” was, indeed, a product of “fake news”.
It did not take long before an outrage fad erupted and took hold of the who’s-who crowd of the Opposition’s chi-chi social media “influencers” community. No less than the eminent “journalist” Ed Lingao responded with an open letter to Uson also posted on Facebook. His first argument is a familiar one: “I suppose wala ka naman duon…” (“I suppose you weren’t there.”).
Lingao goes further to write…
What I cannot understand is where you get the nerve to imply that [EDSA] was all theatrics.If you want samples of theatrics, there are more appropriate samples out there, like the one on a lady assistant secretary’s blog where she shows herself plinking targets with a rifle, with the caption that says “training kahapon bago pumunta sa Mindanao.” Or one where she is reading law books.
…and closes with another familiar sort of argument:
BTW, did you know that your Tatay’s mother Nanay Soling was part of the anti-dictatorship movement, and led the Yellow Friday group in Davao? Could she have taken part in the local “drama” in Davao too?
It is actually quite laughable that an esteemed “journalist” like Lingao (not to mention his legions of social media amigas) would give Uson’s latest stunt the time of day and, while at it, miss the real point altogether by a mile.
The real point one could have easily made (had one been a bit more thoughtful and a bit less screechy about this circus) is that the reason 84 percent of respondents to Uson’s poll agreed with her is that these respondents are likely overwhelmingly made up of her followers. That alone would have cast Uson’s stunt within a better frame of thinking. Uson’s poll results, unlike those published by the likes of Pulse Asia and SWS, do not pretend to have any real science behind it. Its respondents (being mostly her followers) do not comprise a random sample that is representative of the Philippine population.
Taking the time to seriously consider the outcome of Uson’s survey is no different to concluding, on the basis of how many people agree with, say, Jim Paredes’s tweets (using retweets and likes as “evidence”), that the EDSA “People Power Revolution” was the most awesome single event in Philippine history. Indeed, it is no different to how a big swathe of misguided minds continue to take as “fact” a list of “fake news sites” issued by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) despite the same lack of any sound basis nor consistent set of criterion used to cobble together such a list.
Funny enough, Lingao, took the shrieky path and went on to post an emotionally-charged but intellectually flat response rather than encourage his audience to think and soundly conclude that Uson’s poll is best taken with a grain of salt.
Lingao, in effect, validates the outcome of Uson’s survey that 84% of Filipinos seemingly believe that the EDSA “people power revolution” is a figment of the national imagination by responding to this dubious conclusion tit for tat. Lingao was being defensive rather than circumspect. The fact that Yellowtards like Lingao find the need to respond to every insinuation about EDSA throws light into the crisis that grips — and paralyses — the Philippine Opposition today.
The ascendancy of the 1986 EDSA “People Power Revolution” has practically become the last standing pillar that creakily props up the Yellowtard ideology. Gone is the ascendancy of the “yellow” brand as a symbol of virtue following “vice president” Leni Robredo’s call for people to avoid the colour in last weekend’s anniversary mass actions. The Roman Catholic Church no longer draws adherents to the Yellowtard cause as well seeing how the sight of nuns and priests in protest rallies attract ridicule and no longer the warm fuzzy veneration they had come to be used to. And the Second Aquino Administration proved to be such an immense disaster that an entire nation was lost to a dark horse that galloped into Imperial Manila from Mindanao in 2016. Thus it is hardly surprising that the EDSA “Revolution” event is now being defended by the Yellowtards with such Taliban-like fervour.
Once again, it cannot be emphasized enough: The Philippine Opposition needs to ditch the Yellowtards. These obsolete fundamentalists form the single biggest piece of useless baggage that is preventing the Opposition from stepping up to being the worthy political counterweight to the popular government of current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. For a democracy to truly serve a nation, a competent, intelligent, and modern opposition force is essential. Sadly the one today being led by the Yellowtards fails at every measure. And, in his zeal to be seen to be a champion of an obsolete cause, Ed Lingao has, yet again, proven this sad fact.
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