‘Silent Majority’ signals a return of the Yellow camp to ‘Opposition’ mode

May 2, 2016

by benign0

The notion of the “Silent Majority”, which the camp of incumbent President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III and his ill-fated would-be successors Mar Roxas and sidekick Leni Robredo have recently retreated to, is a sign. It is a sign that the Yellow camp has reverted back to its “Opposition” mode of operations reminiscent of the mid-2000s when the Establishment of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was the “enemy” and the “good guys” were those rallying in Makati’s streets in “unity walks” and “prayer vigils”.

Throwback activism: Vintage photo of mid-2000s street rallies under the Yellow ‘opposition’ banner

It’s a classic example of the same lack of imagination that created the debacle that was the Second Aquino Administration to begin with.

That the Yellow camp would go back to doing the same thing again is characteristic of their now evidently-consistent failure of thinking. Then again, perhaps I lie. There actually is some semblance of imagination at work in the new Yellow “Opposition”. The presumption in what the Yellow camp latch on to in these desperate times is that there is some kind of imagined “majority” that has so far remained “silent” in the course of the rise of Rodrigo Duterte to the top of the presidential race. Why does this majority remain “silent”? That’s anybody’s guess. My theory is quite simple:

Silence is the only sound argument applicable to advocates of a Mar Roxas presidency.

In a system of government where “majority rules” and the court of public opinion is the final arbiter of what is “right”, it is quite clear that the campaign of Mar Roxas failed and dragged Leni Robredo and the rest of the Liberal Party down the abyss with him. They’ve come full circle and their notions of how democracy “works” have come back to bite.

Back in 2012, the Yellow camp cheered while the “political exercise” that was the Senate Impeachment “Court” convicted the late Chief Justice Renato Corona using the same tactics that now utterly dooms Roxas’s and Robredo’s candidacies. Public perception after all is the barometer of righteousness in a democracy, the Yellowtards constantly reminded us. And so, here we are just weeks before the presidential election. To be fair, Roxas and his camp put forth admirable appeals to decency and level-headedness in thinking in the electorate. Unfortunately, accumulated perceptions of incompetency, lack of sincerity, and overall vacuousness have come to weigh heavily against Roxas and Robredo.

Chalk another one up for the triumph of public perception in Philippine “democracy”. Tough luck for the Liberal Party camp, though. The very same ocho-ocho public perception that catapulted a no-substance presidential candidate into Malacanang in 2010 now dooms his own party and the childhood hopes of Wharton’s Filipino sunshine boy.

Perhaps it is fitting. The Yellow Horde had originally distinguished itself as no more than an “Opposition” machine by introducing such world-renowned democratic innovations like street-party-style “people power” circuses and the use of victim menatlity narratives and “sacrifice” platforms in political discourse. It’ll likely find its role in the “Opposition” side of things quite familiar and comfy over the next six years.