THE LIBERAL PLAN

By Jose Alejandrino

May 2016

The plan, as I wrote previously, was to stop Duterte from winning the presidency. Leni Robredo was chosen as the liberal vice-presidential candidate because she wasn’t too smart and could be “controlled.” In case Duterte could not be stopped. Smartmatic would be the hocus-pocus as its fallback position.

At the initial stage of the election, Duterte was stripped of 1.1-million votes. When it became obvious his margin had widened over Mar Roxas and could not be stripped any further without arousing suspicion, the liberals focused on the VP position and on ensuring they won enough seats in the Senate. BBM was leading by a comfortable margin over Robredo but that margin evaporated overnight and Robredo took the lead by some 200,000 votes. My American friends tipped me. I then wrote just after the May election that there was massive fraud and asked Comelec chair Andy Bautista to declare failed elections for the VP and senatorial races. Bautista told me it could not be done after checking with Noynoy with whom he was in constant contact.

The liberals won the VPship and were able to hold on to the Senate. This allowed them to destabilize Duterte with the ultimate aim of toppling and replacing him with Robredo. Leila de Lima’s Senate committee on Justice provided the platform to investigate EJKs whose number Robredo exaggerated to the UN conference on drugs in Vienna via her video message. Chito Gascon’s CHR provided backup support by inviting UN rapporteur Agnes Callamard to Manila. Callamard was connected to the George Soros’ Open Society Foundation which advocated the liberalization of drugs which Robredo supported.

The liberals kept harping that Duterte was a minority president because he only received 39% of the electoral votes. They didn’t accuse FVR of the same thing when FVR got slightly less than 25% of the electoral votes. So I suggested the way for Duterte to overcome this criticism was by achievements to raise his popularity. This is exactly what happened. Duterte’s record of achievements in his first three years in office raised his popularity rating in opinion polls to over 80%.

After Leila de Lima went to jail to await trial for her connection to druglords, Antonio Trillanes took the cudgel in the Senate of attacking Duterte. The opinion polls showed most Pinoys approved of Duterte’s war on illegal drugs. Trillanes focused on slandering Duterte by claiming he held billions in his bank account and by connecting his son Paolo and son-in-law Mans Carpio to the drug trade. Trillanes’ tactics failed miserably. They only helped raise Duterte’s popularity rating while shattering his own credibility.

May 2019

As the May 2019 mid-term elections approached, the liberals were in a quandary. The campaign sorties of the LP’s Otso Diretso produced small crowds. I realized then the LP was going to be marginalized and that none of the Otso Diretso candidates stood a chance of winning. I said so in my postings. I said the liberals were finished.

Out of desperation, Trillanes and the Otso Diretso had to find a way to reduce what I called the “Duterte factor” meaning the president’s popularity. Thus emerged the Bikoy video followed by the Sodoma plot. The latter was really a rehash of the coup plot against GMA by Trillanes and his Magdalo. Robredo would replace Duterte with Trillanes calling the shots if they succeeded in getting some elements of the AFP to join them in a coup. None of the AFP units fell for their ploy. The Bikoy video intended to slander Duterte and his family backfired when the producer of the video surrendered, admitted it was a fake and implicated Trillanes and the Otso Diretso minus the participation of Mar Roxas who had the good sense to stay out of it. Came the May elections and the Otso Diretso was decimated. None of them as I had predicted won.

After the results of the May 2019 elections the liberals realized they needed a fundamental change of strategy. Kiko Pangilinan, the campaign manager of the Otso Diretso, took full responsibility for their debacle and offered to resign. It was a case of too little and too late. They had already shot themselves in the foot.

The liberals had failed to stop Duterte’s war on drugs. They had failed to discredit by slandering him. They had failed to reduce his popularity. What remained? To destroy his independent foreign policy achievements by drumming up anti-Chinese hysteria at home in the hope of gaining favor with Uncle Sam and driving a wedge between Duterte and Jinping and between Duterte and Trump. This was the real purpose of former DFA Sec. Albert del Rosario’s trip to Hongkong where he was barred from entry despite his waving frantically his diplomatic passport to be able to accuse Beijing of not honoring the Geneva Convention. The Chinese were not duped. Del Rosario could not use his diplomatic passport on private business, which itself was a contravention of the Geneva Convention, and sent him packing back to Manila where the DFA announced it was revoking diplomatic passports given to officials no longer in service, including Del Rosario’s.

The liberals have done nothing but mischief. And failed each time. Will they ever learn? Sadly, idiots can never learn.