Pretend it is 2022 now. Can Sara win as president? Sure. No doubt. But she may not (“shimenet” in chronicles’ word of the week) like it. Reason: I just pretended to say it.
She knew how her father’s pretension for political correctness began to severely increase when he campaigned as a presidential candidate in 2016. She knew the end of his 2016-2022 presidency would come. And now that she is VP, rather than successor of her father, she has no one to blame but herself. Everything presidential was an open book to her and her supporters. They studied that a bit. But as for the reason why they underestimated everything unpresidential during that time, nobody knew. Sara and her supporters did not know that there was a lot of it. They did not bother to study. Or maybe, they pretended that everything was presidential in Tatay Digong. They thought it was for continuity’s sake, riding on Dutertismo which was so high. Its extremes, however, had to last because they allowed themselves to be subordinated by, and subservient to, the candidacy of “truly” their President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Sara called that UniTeam. Its theme was what political communicators and observers wanted to clear up. To date the question has remained unanswered: Why was unity the political platform? And the trendier question, “Bakit pagkakaisa na nga lang ang plataporma, hindi pa natupad?” (It was a mere platform of unity, but why was it not fulfilled?) is more for Sara, than BBM.
The VP’s followers did not mind the mind of the youthful political communicator Orville B. Tatcho, PhD, a Fulbright scholar in the USA from 2018-2021. (They usually explain, “Abugada si Inday, alam niya lahat yan.”) This UP Baguio associate professor conducted in-depth studies of the elder Duterte owing to his research interests which include presidential debates and advertising and political rhetoric.
In “Beyond Strategic Maneuvering: Embodied Storytelling as Duterte’s Form of Argumentation,” Tatcho rationalized how the then Chief Executive would tell stories, how the storytelling would function, where it would “draw its currency and its pitfalls.”
The paper concluded in part: “Now four years through his term, Duterte continues to engage in embodied storytelling with mixed consequences—what was once touted as refreshing during the campaign because of a semblance of authenticity has now, in the context of the pandemic, more forcefully drawn the ire of citizens demanding detailed policy and concrete action. A rhetorical performance must therefore be continuously interrogated through time, going beyond a single event.” (Tatcho, 2020)
In “The Rhetoric of Anti-Intellectualism: Facebook Pages in Duterte’s Propaganda,” the University of Alabama-educated researcher probed “the ways in which anti-intellectualism operates in and through the Facebook pages that comprised Duterte’s propaganda machine.”
He continued: “The examples that open this study show a traditional form of anti-intellectualism that attacks institutions of knowledge such as science and research. The pundits in Duterte’s propaganda machine, however, use anti-intellectualism to attack those that they perceive as “elitist” or more specifically, critics of Duterte. Their form of anti-intellectualism is populist anti-elitism as they eschew knowledge that is supposedly exclusionary in favor of an epistemic regime that values knowledge that is practical, commonsensical, and convenient. They wage a war against critics and intellectuals who always “belittle” the Filipino poor and the mainstream media or the ‘presstitutes’ they label as corrupt or paid hacks. The bloggers and pundits also claim to act as opinion leaders with ‘neither wealth nor pedigree’ (Thinking Pinoy) who cater to the ‘ordinary Filipinos’ (Mocha Uson Blog) and who provide commentary through ‘tongue-in-cheek posts, written in street-style language’ (Sasot).” (Tatcho, 2024)
Examining public speeches, according to him, is a genuine act of citizenship.
“The reality of trolls, bots, deep fakes, and phony accounts should increasingly be recognized to understand how disinformation operates both rhetorically and technologically,” Tatcho wrote, adding that there is a need to review public sphere on social media “not only because of how pundits and their echo chambers detract from meaningful deliberation, but also due to the ways in which algorithms popularize certain forms of content.”
And what was expected occurred: After netizens’ reexamination after reexamination of the elder Duterte’s palpable bloopers and unfilled campaign promises, and immediately after highly controversial taxpayer money issues worth P125 million that cannot be explained by the Office of VP Sara but immediately (11 days to be exact) spent anyway, coupled with DepEd leadership controversies, resignation from that department whose budget is the government’s top priority, having a self-authored children’s book “Isang Kaibigan” but asking the public to finance it to the tune of P10 million in an unfriendly and acrimonious manner, and many other fiascos, including the latest COA issuance of P73-M notice of disallowance on her office’s disbursement of confidential funds in 2022, paano pa maibi-“bida ang saya” meant for the wannabe dictator in waiting?
If the controversies hounding the VP linger – as much as she has been avoiding legitimate questions –her popularity ratings will continue to drop, and people will surely come to their senses by trying to totally reject her even years before the 2028 presidential elections.
“Shimenet” like to be questioned in vice-presidential debates in 2022 and she may not act any longer as if people have yet to learn to have curiosity in learning what she is not capable of. That may not be avoided. Shimenet.
DC Alviar
Professor DC Alviar serves as a member of the steering committee of the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). He was part of National University’s community extension project that imparted the five disciplines of a learning organization (Senge, 1990) to communities in a local government unit. He writes and edits local reports for Mega Scene. He graduated with a master’s degree in development communication from the University of the Philippines Open University in Los Baños. He recently defended a dissertation proposal for his doctorate degree in communication at the same graduate school under a Philippine government scholarship grant. He was editor-in-chief of his high school paper Ang Ugat and the Adamson News.
