At first I thought, what the heck is she saying? And then I realised Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio could be history’s most honest politician after admitting that all politicians lie. She said this in defence of Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos who is being hit with allegations that she lied about having a Law degree from the University of the Philippines and graduating from the Ivy League school Princeton University. The jury is still out on whether the late former President Ferdinand Marcos’s daughter did graduate or not from the said universities, but it is safe to say that President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter makes a good point.
Carpio was simply telling the truth, particularly after she clarified
that she was referring to the members of the Opposition specifically
since they have been known to lie. She singled out current Vice
President Leni Robredo and reminded everyone that there is still an
election protest underway against her and until the outcome of that is
finalised, Robredo cannot speak with authority about “honesty” and
“integrity”.
It is a fact that Robredo turned a blind eye to irregularities in the
2016 Presidential Elections especially when her numbers went up and
overtook that of former senator and rival in the Vice Presidential race
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr after a Smartmatic personnel inserted a
script into the system software in the middle of vote canvassing. Most
of us were shocked as it was happening, but Robredo’s camp acted like
there was nothing unusual about someone interrupting a vote count.
Robredo is still turning a blind eye to reported irregularities
during the recount of votes being conducted by the Supreme Court acting
as Presidential Electoral Tribunal in response to Marcos’s protest.
There were reports that some ballots that were brought in were wet or
missing. Robredo was not even worried about them, giving the public the
impression that she is okay with that information. One would think that
Robredo would be the first to react considering her position is the one
being questioned. One would think that Robredo would be showing concern
and calling for an investigation, but we only read about her accusing
Marcos of inventing things.
Robredo and her camp are also defending the ridiculous idea that it
is okay for ballots to be shaded less than fifty percent of the space
provided for selecting candidates. Again, her indifference to the
Commission on Election (COMELEC) rules being broken is giving the public
the impression that she is okay with allegations that those ballots
were pre-shaded.
Robredo also lied in her 2017 pre-recorded video addressing the United Nations about Duterte’s war on drugs policy.
She claimed that there were 7,000 killings as a result of summary
executions conducted by the Philippine National Police. Her statements
were not even backed by data from the agency or an objective source. In
her effort to put down the President, she also painted the police in a
bad light and inadvertently humiliated the entire society by giving the
international community a negative impression of the Philippines. That
is enough proof that Robredo is one of the politicians who have a habit
of lying.
Leni Robredo: Is she being honest in her claim to being the vice president of the Philippines?
Going back to Carpio’s statement about honesty and lying, the Mayor is actually helping educate the members of the voting public. Carpio is basically saying that the public should take what politicians are saying with a level of scepticism – a very high level of healthy scepticism.
It’s like this; politicians make a lot of promises during elections.
We don’t know for sure if the candidates are going to keep thier
promises or not. If a politician has experience in public service, we
can look at his or her track record and see if his or her promises were
kept in the past. That can be our basis in choosing to vote or not to
vote for that candidate. It’s tough luck for newbies in the arena
because the voters have no basis in assessing if they are worth
“trusting” or if they will end up like the rest of the bozos in
government. And this is essentially what Marcos supporters are saying in
their defence regarding her degree – that they don’t really care much
about whether she has a degree or not because they are happy with her
performance and track record as a public servant. Meanwhile, a lot of
her detractors from the Liberal Party particularly those who are also
running for a seat in the Senate don’t have a track record to boast
about, which is why they focus on negative propaganda in an effort to
bring her and the rest of their opponents down.
While all politicians overpromise, some of the promises that get
broken is a result of being too idealistic and not doing enough analysis
to check if their advocacies are realistic or would pass the “So What?”
Test. I suppose we can say that Duterte’s promise to solve criminality
in three to six months was a promise that wasn’t thought through. He may
have wanted to keep his promise but underestimated the criminal
syndicates operating within the police force and government itself. It’s
hard to tell who the enemies are when some are in the drug lords’
payrolls. But the reason why Duterte still has a high satisfaction
rating even though he did not fulfil his promise to solve criminality as
soon as possible is because he is honest enough to admit his mistake
and the people see he is doing something about it. More importantly, he
has kept a lot of his promises during his campaign. He is a far cry from
the previous President BS Aquino who pretended everything was peachy in
the country. He was lying of course.
And that is why the Ocho Derecho candidates from the Liberal
Party are not very popular in the surveys. They are being dragged down
by the appalling track record of their party mates who were previously
in power. The voting public still remembers their incompetence and
criminal negligence because they still affect Filipinos today. It’s only
right that Carpio highlighted them. Politicians from the Liberal party
tend to believe their own lies.
No comments:
Post a Comment