Manolo Quezon is #TheExplainer Newsletter - Issue #25: Secret Candidates
Today's newsletter makes up for lost time: I didn't do a Monday "Electoral Merry-Go-Round" because today's column was going to do the job.
The President and the "Fear Factor"
Tuesday night I was a guest on Christian Esguerra's "After the Fact" show with Walden Bello. Do watch it.
I tried to boil down the President's being a "communicator" along four broad points:
He is the national Id, a role first played by Miriam Defensor-Santiago, daring to say many things the country really thinks but which was formerly taboo to say;
He knows the value of shock appeal, of being good copy, and knows he is only a good as his ability to keep shocking;
But this requires a controlled media, otherwise open season to pick at 1 and 2: control can be achieved in many ways, by charm or threats or both;
Ultimately implied threats on anyone who disagrees is also required; there must be the perception of dire, even lethal, consequences, for anyone who might actually put forward a succesful argument against the President.
In the show, I also made reference to “Führerprinzip,” this is what I mean in a nutshell:
I'd like to share, verbatim, a response to the show by a viewer, which is of great interest:
Am watching replay of you & walden on ANC.
On pollsters who say fear factor is not a factor until the number of those who refuse to answer become statistically significant, my retort is they underestimate the fear.
Du30 worked on terrorizing the public by targeting each sector with what they fear most.
To scare the poor: Vigilante killings started day after his election and cops started killing in earnest after his inauguration and the announcement of tokhang. And he made it a point to show he stood with the killers.
To scare the rich: the attack on Mile Long and Bobby Ongpin and later on the telecom monopolies and water companies
To scare LGUs: he called mayors to Palace and threatened them with inclusion in drug list if they didn't dance
To scare the press: Rappler. ABS & Inquirer w/c was owned by the same oligarchs that owned Mile Long
To scare Congress: Leila. Trillanes He showed Congress he would stop at nothing to bring down anyone who crossed him and rewarded those who helped him get her
To scare the Court and courts: Sereno. He would stop at nothing but rewarded all the justices who brought her down
To scare any independent worker in ombudsman: Deputy Ombudsman Carandang
To scare an independent AMLC: hounded the head he suspected of leaking his BPI bank acct to Trillanes: accused her of being the lover of Trillanes and bullied her until she resigned
To scare COA: all those jokes and curses and threats to throw them down the stairs everytime they published a nega report on him or his favorites
To scare military top brass: the unceremonial and unexplained firing of the navy chief for exposing Bong Go's role in that Korean ship comms deal.
To scare religious orgs: his verbal attacks on Catholic officials and vigilante murders of parish priests
To scare lawyers: vigilante killings
So he didn't terrorize the country by doing one big thing like suspending the writ, or declaring ML which would have planted a shared fear among diff sectors. He used targetted terror, as you can see from the above examples. If at all the only common denominator among his targets is the message: don't fuck with me, I am vindictive to a fault, I know how to fuck with you - an attack on you will not immediately be seen as an attack on all, an attack on you will be an attack only on you and your sector.
So all of that plays into the fear factor and why it's absurd for pollsters to cite refusal to answer as the measure of fear.
I remember your story that under Stalin everybody tried to applaud louder than the rest and no one dared be the first to stop clapping and sit so the standing ovations went on until Stalin continued with his speech and that was the signal they could stop clapping and return to their seat.
The way pollsters see it is
Yes are the clappers, No are those who remained seated, and those who Refuse to answer are presumably not that bilib with du30 to say Yes but are either afraid or not bold enough to say No?
So No is the only answer you can trust because under the circumstances, one cannot say there is no fear among the Yes group
The show took off from the President's causing vaccine centers to be overwhelmed due to panic over his statements. But of course there is also the perception the situation was engineered:
This week's The Long View
Secret candidates | Inquirer Opinion — opinion.inquirer.net
By: Manuel L. Quezon III - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:05 AM August 11, 2021
When Chavit Singson signed on to the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), it seemed to me the way was being paved for that party to become Manny Pacquiao’s new political home. After all, the man who calls the shots, Ramon Ang, had said Pacman is a strong contender for the presidency. Absent the results of the coming fight, we haven’t seen any movement in that direction: but Pacquiao and friends were evicted from the PDP-Laban with the President’s active approval. As far as the NPC is concerned, what we have seen is Senate President Sotto, a party stalwart, paving the way for a coalition with Panfilo Lacson, himself a newly-minted high official in the newly-revived Partido Reporma of Renato de Villa.
It’s interesting that if Lacson was going to be convinced of the necessity of a party affiliation, that Sotto didn’t make a pitch to his pal to make that affiliation NPC. I can venture a reason why. That reason, however, requires a rather lengthy detour. First, let’s return to the PDP-Laban which is essentially run by the veterans of the Arroyo era, when the ruling party known as Lakas-NUCD was itself taken away from Fidel Ramos and after it served its purpose, kicked aside by Kampi. Former president Gloria Arroyo, after being removed as deputy speaker, mounted a hostile takeover of PDP-Laban and her people, in turn, have engineered the elimination of Pacquiao.
After evicting Pacman, the President has lately been training his sights on Manila Mayor Isko Moreno. But the President is not, as people think, a real risk-taker. He gets into fights he’s already won before publicly starting them. Mayor Moreno had become mayor with the National Unity Party (itself a spin-off from Kampi) and the big bucks of its boss, behind him: this backing was a core reason for Moreno being considered a presidential contender even ahead of completing a term in office. Now, of course, Moreno has left NUP, which sent the signal to everyone that the big backing isn’t there anymore, or that the support has been postponed, at least for anything higher than the mayoralty in 2022: so instead Moreno’s new affiliation is along the lines of Lacson’s: a souvenir, in his case, Aksyon, dusted off the shelf for reuse.
Which brings our long and winding road to the two-tandem solution that seems to be actively in consideration by the ruling coalition.
While PDP-Laban has declared its tandem will be Go-Duterte, there remains Hugpong, the regional bloc presided over by Mayor “Daughterte,” which the mainstream parties all claim will be, want to be, or are already in alliance with: after all, “Daughterte” is the front-runner in a race which hasn’t even started but which is all about positioning at this point. So long as candidacies aren’t formalized, this meaningless state of affairs will likely persist. Without avowed presidential candidates, two of the three parties with real money, NUP and NPC, can save their ammo until surveys make the viability, or lack of it, of the Dutertes, more obvious.
The idea of a Go-Duterte and, say, Duterte-Teodoro/Angara/Gatchalian (anyone, it seems, might do) would be similar to the Duterte-Cayetano and Santiago-Marcos maneuver, where the real tandem would actually be matched with expendable running mates. This divides the focus of opponents and prevents a unified message about the real tandem (a Daughterte-Duterte tandem, for example). The big parties, which still have big bosses who need to do business with the President and his people until he becomes a real lame duck, run less of a risk with already naming potential vice presidential candidates the President, even if he were to really seek the vice presidency, would be hard-put to attack now (the most the President could manage, if you noticed, was to make a back-handed compliment to the Senate President during his last Sona; he couldn’t oust Sotto even if he tried, and probably doesn’t dare a frontal attack for reasons explained above).
The big-bucks parties, by not stating a firm commitment either way to any presidential candidate, can pretend to be in support of the yet-to-be-formalized candidacy of Daughterte without actually yet putting their money where their flexible mouths are. The closer we get to October, the clearer things will get; and meanwhile, they can informally support candidates belonging to other parties without being explicit about it. Which is why I think the Lacson-Sotto tandem, which is a viable one in and of itself, also provides the big players with cover for discreetly supporting them: the signal sent here is NPC is tacitly behind Lacson, and the cutting of ties with Moreno suggests it’s entirely possible NUP will back Lacson, too.
Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3
This week's Electoral Merry-Go-Round
There were four developments.
The decision of the Vice-President and Senator Lacson to agree to disagree on a way forward for the opposition. The Veep also said she'd talked to Pacquiao (twice!).
The adoption of party affiliations for two possible contenders, Panfilo Lacson (Reporma) and Isko Moreno (Aksyson).
The comical effort of the administration to go after the Mayor of Manila. When that failed, the President decided to mock him and, more significantly, deprive the Manila city government of aid, which he ordered national agencies to distribute, instead.
Formalizing Go-Duterte as the standard bearers of PDP-Laban.
Others remain cagey on their options, from Senator Grace Poe to former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Sara Duterte supporters for their part, are projecting an image of being resource-rich.
Trying to unify the "Opposition" (why the quotes? Read on) is proving problematic; there's 1Sambayan and now, the Vice-President herself. A slicing-and-dicing of the "Opposition" by John Nery is as good as any and better than most:
Image-making department
Which the momentum, such as it is, lies with the proposed Lacson-Sotto tandem. In a previous newsletter I've pointed out how well-organized the emerging Lacson-Sotto tandem is. Greater focus on Lacson has been the case not least because he needs it to be that way, to raise his numbers.
Warning: Lacson | Inquirer Opinion — opinion.inquirer.net
A BRAND THAT APPEALS TO THE RIGHT. As many who are active online must have noticed, Lacson is currently running a branding campaign on various digital and social media spaces. He is positioning himself as “Heneral ng Bayan,” the People’s General, even though it has been exactly 20 years since his tenure as four-star general and chief of the Philippine National Police came to an early end with Estrada’s resignation. (Lacson retired to run, successfully, for the Senate.) Colleague Manuel L. Quezon may be right when he likens the apparent appeal of a “Heneral ng Bayan” brand to the popularity of Jerrold Tarog’s “Heneral Luna”—the movie is a masterpiece, but it gave rise to two contradictory messages: The cinematic Luna both embodied Teodoro Agoncillo’s central idea of class struggle (a sorely mistaken view, as I have written before) and appealed to the people’s desire for strong leadership. The Duterte campaign in 2016 proved that an entire presidential run can rest on the peace and order issue, even though, at best, it ranks only seventh in the list of voters’ concerns.
Counterpoint: 'Heneral Luna' Romanticized Strongmen — www.esquiremag.ph
There is a diptych of heroism at the center of the film distilled in the line: bayan o sarili. Luna represents prioritizing the nation, while his enemies thought only of self. On one side, you find, in Tarog's words, the "uncompromising and violent" Luna, who wished to fight the Philippine-American War to the bitter end. Against him were the scheming and effete "traitors" like Buencamino who wanted to surrender to the Americans. If the film didn't hammer this message, its marketing definitely did.
It's the simplicity of "bayan o sarili" that continues to trouble me. As a historian, I object to portraying those who sued for peace as "traitors." The Philippine-American war was unprecedented in its violence, causing by some estimates the death of ten percent of the population. For politicians like Buencamino to seek peace after such carnage may have been traitorous to some, but humane for others. Provincial elites and ilustrados like Luna were leading their troops—many of whom were poor peasants—into slaughter, and while compromising with the enemy may have been less glorious than dying on the field of battle (alas, less cinematic?), it was not simple selfishness.
Those who "collaborated" with Americans have been pilloried for opportunism by historians from the "nationalist school" of the University of the Philippines. Its doyen, Teodoro Agoncillo, once claimed that T.H. Pardo de Tavera deserved to be shot for surrendering to the Americans. Heneral Luna dismisses these figures in the same light. But as Resil Mojares's Brains of the Nation (to me, the single most important book on Filipino ilustrados) shows, the collaboration of people like Pardo with the Americans had multiple impulses. Apart from pacifism, they believed, maybe naively, that the liberal reforms they sought under Spain would be possible under America. There's an argument to be made that the liberal reformist, Jose Rizal, who admired many aspects of American republicanism, would have agreed with his drinking buddy, Pardo.
Does this mean these people were not opportunists? No. But they were complex characters, maybe more complex than the martial Luna.
The fantastical belief, or perhaps counterfactual, at the heart of Heneral Luna is the wish for national deliverance after imperialism: if only we had beaten these Americans, if the traitors hadn’t sold us out... Never mind that independence from Americans would have still ended up with elite, cacique rule. Unfortunately, nationalistic deliverance may be as fleeting as the ending criminality in 3 to 6 months. But of course cinema and electoral politics must trade in fantasy.
So did Heneral Luna contribute to Duterte's rise? Maybe not directly. But it foregrounded a strong, dictatorial leader at a time when people were sick of effete and opportunistic liberals. It also glorified a violent nationalism and dismissed pacifism as treason. Mr. Tarog cannot wash his hands of this message. If I am inquisitorial, it is only because whatever authoritarian fantasies Mr. Tarog’s film may have generated are now becoming reality.
Mr. Tarog believes that my criticism constitutes “suppression.” But he confuses the critic for the censor. I do not wish to chill his work on Quezon—I might even pay good money to see it (I’d love to see a House of Cards, Philippine edition). But if he uses the Philippine de Gaulle to promote another “uncompromising” vision of Philippine politics, I will once again feel obligated to take a stand.
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