RABID partisan politics has done so much damage to our sense of community and our humanity.
This is what happens when people begin to arrogate upon themselves the monopoly of virtue and function as if they are the sole guardians of morality. This is the consequence when privileged individuals begin acting as if theirs is the only way to the right and the good.
A similar thing happened with religion. Something that speaks about goodness and forgiveness has been so weaponized that it has bred so much hatred and discord, even political violence. And this is what happens when some believe that their faith is the only way to salvation.
This is what the holier-than-thou attitude of the opposition has done to our politics and our political culture. It is now nothing but a force that subsists on a toxic load of self-righteousness.
I have long accepted the fact that Marcos loyalists and the diehard Duterte supporters or DDS do not pretend to operate on a moral high ground. They admit it themselves. In fact, their very existence comes as a rebellion against the self-righteous elites. This is the crowd that cheers every time President Rodrigo Duterte curses and threatens to kill. This is the same crowd that dismisses the allegations of plunder and corruption against the Marcoses. They have no pretensions of being religious or learned. In fact, they are critics of the Catholic Church and Catholic schools which they see as hypocritical. They breathe anti-intellectualism for oxygen, and they dismiss and diminish academics as pretentious and detached.
In contrast, the political opposition that is now gravitating around Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo are known for bearing moralistic, upright tropes. They pride themselves on being the guardians of correct history and the fate of the nation. They are the sword-bearers ready to do battle with the evil forces as they label anyone who lives and breathes Duterte and channels Marcos as an enemy to be taken down.
And we end up tragically a toxically divided country. With a highly personalized political culture, the clashes are no longer in the realm of ideological and policy differences, but in the arena of personal icons and competing dynasties.
In a political system where political parties are not mere bearers of the personal ambitions of politicians but are instead aggregators of political interests around a declared ideology, people at least fight for ideals and principles, and not just around the narratives of political families and figures. The ideological battles remain a contestation of political platforms, such as debates on the proper role of government in the lives of people, the size of the public debt, the level of taxation and what to do with the changing climate.
But in the Philippines, the fight is no longer on these issues that matter, but has been reduced to politicians running for office against someone and less for the people. At a time when we need to hear their plans on how we can recover from a once-in-a-century plague brought by Covid-19, Robredo has chosen to focus on this tiring anti-Marcos trope and playing her usual passive-aggressive mode, taunting Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso by alleging that he is in the mold of a Marcos. When Domagoso responded, her loyal base, now wearing pink and not yellow, pounces on him as if it is his duty to just be a nice boy and be quiet and accept the blows.
Meanwhile, Duterte and his allies are busy mangling the electoral process by offering a pseudo-candidate to obviously warm the bench for his preferred alter ego, perhaps his reluctant daughter. They do not pretend to even care if the travesty is just too obvious. Either this is a sign of reckless panic, or of callous impunity.
It is obvious that former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is not the favorite of Duterte and that we may just have seen unambiguous evidence of the breakup of a Marcos-Duterte alliance. But offered this promising opportunity, Robredo and her minions instead pounce on Domagoso. As a single-digit candidate in all surveys, including that conducted by the political party that carried her but now she has refused to become her burden, Robredo should convince as many of the Domagoso and Marcos voters as possible, and perhaps some of the DDS, that she is a better alternative. Politics is addition, but instead she and her followers attack Domagoso as just another Marcos, as if this will work on those she wants to convince and convert.
There is no doubt that our political landscape has been toxically divided. Friendships and families are being torn apart. We witness people ready to throw away years of cultivating personal relationships in exchange for their unrequited support for politicians who do not even have any idea of who they are. They are blocking friends, quarreling with family and severing affinities to serve the political ambitions of people who will never be at their side in their moments of personal crisis.
It is ironic that as social media breaks out in pink, the color of love, and while Robredo inanely mouths that she is running because she wants to love the people she loves, she sows hatred and even breeds an unprincipled negative campaign when her supporters take down Domagoso to peel off his voters because it is harder to turn the DDS and the Marcos loyalists.
With messaging like this, no wonder we see the explosion of lovely pink as profiles and images in my newsfeed brandish the color of love, even as the level of vitriolic attacks has also intensified. It is really sad that the color pink has become the centerpiece of this toxic landscape.
Now we see other colors of the rainbow becoming banners of division and hatred. It is disheartening that political discord has effectively corrupted the real meaning of the rainbow, a symbol of unity in, and beauty of, diversity.
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