Going negative

In the race for the presidency, sometimes demolition and negative campaigning work to bring down aspirants – as in the case of Jejomar Binay and Manny Villar.

Sometimes the black tactics don’t work – as we saw in the case of Rodrigo Duterte, and before him in 1998, Joseph Estrada.

And sometimes they can boomerang. Those who engage in negative campaigning risk a backlash in a land where people typically sympathize with the underdog.

Surely there are people within President Duterte’s inner circle who are giving him this warning, as he goes after Manila Mayor Isko Moreno.

The mayor, who recently got the goat of Duterte’s daughter Sara, had dared insinuate that the President’s warning made people believe the fake news on social media, that unvaccinated people would not get ayuda or be allowed to go outdoors during enhanced community quarantine – causing the bedlam at several vaccination centers in Manila and Las Piñas on the eve of ECQ.

Those of us in the peanut gallery are enjoying the hilarious memes about Moreno and Duterte, in which you can see who is clearly being portrayed as the villain.

While neither man has named names, you have to be living in another planet not to know who is being alluded to. The presidential harangue was also accompanied by the release on social media of photos and video of the skimpily clad Manila mayor from his showbiz days.

Showbiz personalities in this country enjoy public tolerance for certain types of behavior for which ordinary folks might be condemned – as long as they are open about it. Consider how Erap even endeared himself to a segment of the population when he admitted having four families.

President Duterte, who has no scruples about recruiting a sex instructor into his administration, surely understands the virtue of giving people a second chance.

His inner circle should also disabuse him from his outdated concept that equates manliness with penis size. As for desirability, a man can be hung like a horse, but if it’s attached to someone who looks like a horse, I doubt if the ladies would be thrilled.

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In 2016, we saw the impact of negative campaigning not only on the presidential bid of administration candidate Mar Roxas but also (much later) on several of his supporters, including those that Duterte believed were complicit in the negative campaign.

These days, with the campaign period just around the corner, we’re seeing the likelihood of the administration going heavily negative in the 2022 race. Maybe they think it’s the easy path, with troll farms already firmly in place.

The President and some of his officials have long belittled the person seen as the most likely opposition standard bearer, Vice President Leni Robredo. The harsh words, however, could also be in response to criticisms from the opposition, of which she is seen as the head. The knives are out as well for declared presidential aspirant Sen. Panfilo Lacson, but since he isn’t rating high yet, the attacks have been subdued.

But the negative tack is also being applied even against an administration ally, who has upset the political plans of the current dispensation. We have seen the reaction of the administration after Sen. Manny Pacquiao naively made it known, although there is still no official announcement from him, that he wants to run for president under (he hopes) Duterte’s own party the PDP-Laban.

Pacquiao has a respectable showing in the surveys, although still behind the current frontrunner, Sara Duterte-Carpio.

The boxer has since received all the insults in the book, denigrated as an all-brawn, no-brain overambitious pretender who doesn’t know his place. And with his reported openness to an alliance with the opposition 1Sambayan, he will likely be branded with the worst insult in the book of the color-coding attack dogs: an idiotic dilawan.

At the rate the term is being used on anyone who doesn’t suck up to Duterte, including those who aren’t even allies or admirers of the original yellows with ties to the Aquinos, those who are tagged as dilawan should wear it with pride. In this toxic environment, they must be doing something right.

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The original yellows in the Duterte Cabinet – Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat – among the best performers in this administration, should wear the color as a badge of honor.

Duterte himself in fact got his start in politics due to the original yellows. His late mother Soledad, who led the anti-Marcos movement in Davao, would have been appointed by Cory Aquino as officer-in-charge vice mayor of the city after the 1986 revolt. But “Nanay Soling” asked that her son Rodrigo be named instead. Cory Aquino also gave Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III a start in politics, appointing him as OIC Isabela governor in 1986.

As for those who are red-tagged, there are left-leaning individuals who probably would wear the color with pride as well, if it didn’t put their lives at risk.

There are reds who have been killed in genuine counterinsurgency operations; the New People’s Army has been no angel when it comes to killing, destroying property, harassing and extorting “revolutionary taxes” even from the poor.

But there have also been numerous abuses in the counterinsurgency campaign, with individuals including university students being unfairly tagged and then suffering the worst fate.

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In our land of magic realism, maybe only the child of destiny, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo got it right. When she was vice president to Erap, she told STAR editors that one could work hard to attain certain positions in government. But when it comes to the presidency, it’s a matter of fate.

Others think fate is what you make it, and believe that in election races, denigrating the competition is a good way to project oneself and influence fate.

So far, Isko Moreno has not been red-tagged, but he is now being lumped together with the dilawan. A suggested riposte for him is that yellow is better than black, the color of an ink smear, the color of mourning and death.

In this showbiz-obsessed country, it looks like the presidential innuendos and the spread of Yorme Isko’s near-naked photos have even earned him more fans.

It has also led to suggestions for Moreno to co-produce a bio flick, and like Oprah Winfrey tell all about his life, particularly about how he clawed his way out of poverty.

With cinemas closed in the age of COVID, the movie could be streamed on Netflix, just in time for the 2022 race.