Angry

At the polls, our voters unleashed what seemed the equivalent of a primal scream. The oligarchy must take heed: the anger is profound.

For years, while the upper crust played politics-as-usual, the anger was building up. Economic growth meant nothing for the masses as inequality worsened. The inept bureaucracy made life miserable for everybody: from missing car plates, absent mass transit, congested airports and traffic jams that worsened by the day.

Opportunities have been written off. Every day, ordinary Filipinos work hard only to see their dreams thwarted. There is despair. There is real misery systematically ignored by those who wield power.

Our leaders thought they could get by lying to our people, dropping them crumbs from the oligarchic table in the form of dole outs. An incompetent government thought the masses could be entertained by the promises they make, the blueprints they lay out.

Everyone, it seems misread the anger that was out there, seething and waiting for a catalytic event. The elections and the candidacy of an angry mayor from the deep south provided that catalyst.

Observe that red-clad crowd that massed at the Luneta Saturday night. They were not there to receive bottled water and stale sandwiches.  They were there to show their numbers and express their rage.

There is much to be angry about. A revolution is in order. In the same way that the snap elections of 1986 provided a framework for mass mobilization to overthrow a regime, the elections of 2016 organized the building revolutionary energies of a disgusted people.

The ruling elite tried to stop this revolutionary build-up. But they were simply too incompetent to forestall an outcome dictated by the disgusted.

As a last, desperate effort, Noynoy Aquino called on his two favored candidates to unite so that the menace Duterte posed might be averted. That could only have meant one would give way to the other. This was a completely idiotic proposition.

First, it was made too late in the day, just as the campaign period was to end. There was no guarantee the votes would consolidate as the ruling faction wanted.

Second, it insulted our voters. It was an idea that could only have occurred in the minds of landlords who think they could trade away the votes of their serfs. Our voters had, by the time this idiotic proposition was made by Aquino and seconded by Roxas, firmly made up their minds about who to vote for.

Third, the badly conceived proposition simply communicated the desperate position of the candidacies Aquino wanted merged. It simply torpedoed whatever chance, slim as that might be, that someone other than Duterte would triumph at the polls.

That funny proposition simply confirmed what many long suspected: the Aquino regime suffered from a poverty of the imagination.

Completely out of touch, the Aquino regime fielded candidates on the theme of “continuity” when the masses were demanding change. Aquino, who insisted on playing the role of electoral mastermind mistook narcissism for strategy. Thinking the elections would be a celebration of his illusory achievements, he set the framework for popular repudiation.

That funny proposition likewise confirmed what many long suspected: both Aquino and Roxas equally lacked EQ.

 What makes the Aquino regime’s defeat more staggering was that the faction in power was preparing for this electoral contest the past six years.

The Aquino administration, before the whole thing was declared unconstitutional, padded the pork barrel as a means to buy political loyalty. It devised the insidious, the notorious “disbursement acceleration program” to richly reward allies and punish foes. The most systematic and most extensive patronage program was assembled for the single purpose of keeping the ruling party in power.

Aquino dispatched his designated successor Mar Roxas to the middle of a super typhoon so that he could emerge a heroic figure. That, too, played out badly.

Every potential successor to LP hegemony was politically crippled through a comprehensive campaign of vilification. When Binay threatened to play the role of spoiler, he was tarred and feathered thoroughly. When Grace Poe did not accede to LP dictate, a major effort was mounted to scuttle her candidacy.

But the ruling faction neglected the rough-mannered mayor from Davao. Because he was too brusque for their tastes, they thought he would be unacceptable to the masses.

By the time they attempted to demolish Duterte, the man was already the hero of the discontented. He was the lightning rod of public anger at the Aquino regime’s leadership by betrayal. He had become an unstoppable force.

What makes Rodrigo Duterte’s triumph all the more awesome is that this was a candidacy against all the odds.

All the stalwarts of the Establishment – those in ties and those in holy robes – stood squarely against this candidacy. They tried to banish his bid for power by saying he made irreverent jokes, forgetting there is no such thing as reverent jokes.

Duterte’s handlers did not bother to polish his rough edges. They magnified them, thereby producing authenticity pitted against artificiality. The genius of the Duterte campaign lay in its grasp of the counter-intuitive.

When all the votes are counted, Duterte and the mavericks who dared imagine this whole enterprise must realize that an angry candidate supported by the mass of the outraged is the easy part.  The idea was so elegant in its simplicity: harness the rage, curse the condemnable.

The really difficult part lies ahead: how to make us a happy nation again.