“How ridiculous.”
Every election in this country generates names and designations that are deserving of ridicule or derision. Election 2022 is no exception: it has generated, among others, Uniteam, the name chosen by presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and vice-presidential candidate Sara Duterte-Carpio for their campaign organization.
In all their public engagements and appearances BBM – the media’s shorthand name for Ferdinand Marcos Jr. – and Sara Duterte tout their Uniteam, and all their election literature and paraphernalia proudly proclaim the unity aspect of their electoral venture. The namesake of the late dictator and of the former mayor of Davao City vow that, if elected, they will be unifiers and the essence of their administration will be the unity of the nation.
BBM and his family unifiers? President Rodrigo and his elder daughter instruments of national unity? How laughable. How ridiculous.
The name of the BBM-Sara campaign organization is a gross misnomer. It should be Divideteam, not Uniteam.
Let’s start with BBM’s family. President Ferdinand E. Marcos and the wife and children that he left behind make up the most controversial – and most divisive – family in the history of Philippine politics. Mere mention of the family name Marcos kindles fierce feelings of negative passion among non-Ilocano Filipinos. No other family in this country generates the same amount of controversy and negative sentiment as the Marcoses. This is not to say that there are no other families in this country that are objects of negative feelings among Filipinos; there are, but those feelings are not nearly as strong or as deep as the negative feelings that millions of Filipinos continue to harbor towards the family that Ferdinand E. Marcos left behind. A special kind of bad feeling – disdain is the most apt word – is reserved for the Marcoses.
This controversiality, this disapprobation, is not surprising considering the collective record of BBM and his family during their 20-year stay in Malacanang, of which 12 were under martial law. Deceit, extravagance, violations of human and political rights, excesses of all kinds and plunder of the treasury – these sins against the FIlipino people explain why millions of Filipinos remain antipathetic, even hostile, after. The EDSA revolutionaries threw them out of this country.
BBM cannot be a unifier because too many Filipinos – those who know the real story of what his parents did to this country during their long conjugal reign – refuse to have anything to do with a descendant of Ferdinand E. Marcos.
Neither can Sara Duterte-Carpio be a unifier because she is the daughter of arguably the most controversial Chief Executive in this country’s history. The attitude toward Sara Duterte among many Filipinos is a perfect case of the father’s sins being visited on the daughter. President Rodrigo Duterte’s six years in office have been a very derisive time in this country, and Sara Duterte is now inheriting the feelings of alienation and resentment created by her father’s wannabe-autocratic approach to governance. In the eyes of the Filipino people, both Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter are non-unifiers.
If BBM and his running mate believe that the FIlipino people have accepted the believability of their Uniteam campaign, they have another think coming.
