The battle to extract the truth about electoral fraud that marred the 2016 Philippine Presidential Elections drags on because presumptive “vice president” Leni Robredo continues to hinder progress in the investigation. Without going into the details of the case (all of which is publicly-available, save for the facts of those who argue that no fraud had transpired), it is easy to see why a probe into electoral fraud should err on the side of those who allege it occurred.
No Filipino will argue that election cheating never occurred in any Philippine election since independence in 1946. All political camps had, at one time or another, lodged strong complaints of electoral fraud over the last several decades. As such, the position that the possibility of cheating happening in 2016 is utterly ludicrous held by the Liberal Party camp of Robredo is, itself, ludicrous.
Indeed, it is highly-suspect of the camp of Robredo to so quickly brush aside fraud allegations. The onus, in fact, should be on the presumed winner of an election to call for an investigation on allegations of electoral fraud in the election she “won”. The principle at work there (at least for most normal people) is that nobody wants to win a rigged contest. That’s just cheating one’s self. Unfortunately for Filipinos, their politicians’ goals are to win elections at any cost — even if the cost involves compromising the integrity of the very system of government that they seek to be part of.
As such, it is very difficult to believe Philippine Opposition “influencers” who publicly espouse “democratic” ideals. It is because their highest-profile government official at the moment, “vice president” Leni Robredo, refuses to respond properly to challenges to the legitimacy of the office she currently clings to. It does not help her either that she is the presumptive “vice president” only because government officials allied with the Liberal Party in the twilight of their hold on power played the what-are-we-in-power-for card and arbitrarily voided a Commission on Elections (COMELEC) rule that Robredo and her party violated which, in turn, would have disqualified her from holding office.
In short, Robredo’s claim to the vice presidency is tainted at two points — (1) the very likely possibility that fraud occurred in 2016 and (2) the dishonest manner with which she circumvented COMELEC rules she had clearly violated. She has been reduced to a sad punchline and is, as a result, ineffectual and a waste of precious taxpayers’ funds. It is baffling how Liberal Party lackeys in corporate media and the noisy clique of social media “influencers” they give generous airtime to and exchange high-fives with in quaint soireees can screech about “fake news” when the biggest fake news of all — Leni Robredo as “Vice President” — is staring them in the face.
It is quite a tall ask of the shills that make up the traditional cadre of “activists” and the clique of disente “influencers” that have climbed into bed with them to scrape the OA emotionalism that coats their rhetoric and face the truth. As had been revealed in that viral study, Filipinos are confident purveyors and propagators of their own ignorance — a cultural trait that lends itself well to exploitation by such shills who monopolise the proverbial big megaphones in the the Philippines’ information dissemination infrastructure. In Leni Robredo is encapsulated the very cultural archetype that mirrors the sad society-wide predisposition tobelieve in seductive myths rather than think through facts systematically.
No comments:
Post a Comment