There really is a populist revolt. That the elite—and the gullible who routinely believe in the elite—refused to acknowledge it until the very last minute didn’t make the revolt any less real.
As Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte continues his once-improbable march towards Malacañang Palace, what’s clear is just how wrong the fat-cat contributors, the professional punters and the political academics were. They misjudged the people’s anger until it was too late, then they doubled their efforts to deny it even if it was already staring them in the face.
A big part of the blindsiding, I surmise, is because many of these political and economic elites were already committed to other candidates and could no longer back out. This was aggravated by the fact that Duterte was such an outlying outsider that it was very easy to dismiss him as a flash in the political pan.
He was too extreme and too populist to win a national campaign, too volatile and policy-hazy to take seriously. He would be felled by a tsunami of self-inflicted wounds and his popular support would disappear in the face of fearsome, well-funded and coordinated political machineries.
But the people proved the elite and the pundits wrong. And the people may be wrong, but they must be heard if enough of them speak in unison.
Quite naturally, the worst deniers of the Duterte phenomenon were President Noynoy Aquino and his chosen successor, former secretary Mar Roxas. Because Aquino decided to make yesterday’s election not just a transfer of power but a referendum of his own term, he had more than just an ordinary supporter’s interest in seeing to it that Roxas won.
And because Aquino could not wrap his mind around the idea that the people would repudiate him and his administration, he was among those who failed to correctly understand the groundswell of support for Duterte. And figuratively, at least, he was run over by a train filled with angry citizens tired of his blather about world-beating GDP growth and investment-grade credit ratings.
Ultimately, Aquino, Roxas and the rest believed their own propaganda, refusing to validate their pre-cooked conclusions on the ground. Now, perhaps, they have learned their lesson.
The people have spoken, and clearly. Woe to them who refuse to listen.
* * *
Right before the election on Monday, I posted a note on Facebook addressed to Aquino. I think it’s important to repeat part of it here:
Because it is never your fault, you can’t accept that you caused the coming tsunami that now threatens to wash you away. And now it is too late. Too late to appeal for “unity,” to warn about “dictatorship,” to call for “decency.” You could have shown us all of that, by your own actions, when you had the chance. But you didn’t.
You believed that you were always right. You ignored warnings of straying from the straight path that you claimed you were on, but had really abandoned a long time ago.
Most of all, because you never really listened to the people, never really showed you cared for them, never really felt their pain and their suffering, you never saw what was coming.
You gave them GDP growth and investment-grade credit ratings, when all they wanted was food and real, endo-proof jobs. You gave them politicized CCT and worthless PhilHealth cards when they asked for education and hospitalization.
You claimed to have eliminated corruption, when they still had to wait for hours to ride a train.
You made the people angry, angry enough to not believe whatever you say anymore. Now they would rather cast their lot with the unknown, rather than listen to you and your dire warnings.
You threw away all the goodwill you had instead of working for the good of the people who trusted you. You led them on but never delivered.
It’s your fault, you lying, lazy, uncaring, overly proud son of your supposedly sainted parents. Accept that you are wrong and try, in the time you have left in office, to make amends.
You made the people turn away from you and all you stand for. Now you, your surrogates and your kind must face the consequences.
* * *
But what about Mar Roxas? What does destiny have in store for the man who twice claimed that he will win—and who fared even worse the second time around?
I think the first thing Mar should do is concede to Duterte. That would be the decent thing to do, given how the count is showing that Grace Poe is correct in her belief that she would get more votes than Mar.
But that’s just me.
