How to protect Leni Robredo from good intentions

eni Robredo’s campaign is red-hot—or pink-hot, if you will. She is well received in many sectors because her sincerity is authentic. The outpouring of support for her candidacy is an unmistakable sign that she can unite opposition forces, both mainstream and militant, while maintaining her appeal to less-radicalized elements of society. To me, she is the more fitting allegory to Barak Obama for reasons not having to do with gender or race wars, but with well-calculated political pragmatism. Obama was black but not quite Black Panther. He did not rely on the race card, confounding many in the black community who actually accused him of not being proudly  “black enough.” Obama did not panic. He cannot see black people voting for John McCain, but he saw it was viable to win some white support so long as he didn’t spook them with the black stereotype.

   Leni Robredo is the antithesis of Rodrigo Duterte. But she is not naive to think that a wholesale rejection of the traditional politics that Duterte represents is necessarily wise. She doesn’t see the red or  yellow brigades voting for Marcos, or other Duterte proxies either. But she can certainly win over many disappointed Duterte votes, viably even Marcos’ vaunted Solid North so long as she didn’t channel Cory Aquino too strongly as to preemptively repulse them.

   It won’t take long, when Leni starts embracing the eclectic Filipino masses who are not all doctrinaire socialists, before you begin to hear the radical left complain that Leni Robredo is not “opposition enough.”

   So dyeing her political brand pink is a masterful stroke. It sends a strong statement that she doesn’t intend to be purely centrist yellow or militant leftist red.  

   I worry that it is not her detractors but her own supporters who may not get it. The overeager ones, especially, may be clinging to the antiquated dogma  that to support a candidate is to own her politics, forgetting that politics is addition, not antagonism.

   I’ve observed this early in social media that some are convinced demonizing Leni’s opponents is the way to go. Take the anti-historical revisionists, for instance. I agree that the Marcos family are kleptocrats of the highest order. This is a historical fact.  If some people insist on remaining in denial of it after forty-nine years of immersion in the fact, clearly reason cannot be the reason. They could only have been part of the kleptocracy in ways big or small. Proselytizing among their number is a total waste of time. Make no mistake,  plunder as epic in scale as the Marcoses did it must not be erased from memory. But condemning the revision of history is meaningless to  generations that do not know history. The campaign period is too short a time to educate e-gaming millennials who weren’t born yet when Marcos was dictator. Remember, one needs only to have been born after 2003 to vote.

   The same goes for human rights abuses during Marcos’ time. If people were not fazed by all that killing as they were happening, how much more will their outrage be inflamed to be reminded about it four decades after the fact? The atrocities deserve rich condemnation of course. But they cannot merit central focus in a short election campaign just for the blood-curdling memories they evoke.   All the horrendous memories of the holocaust is not preventing the reemergence of ultra rght wing fascism now sweeping across Europe. Neither did the kumbayah legacy of the 1960s civil rights movement prevent the rise—and now the menacing threat of a return—of a Donald Trump. The lesson is simple. Trafficking in historical fear and nostalgic civil disobedience did not help Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections in 2016. It did not help Mar Roxas in the Philippine presidential election in the same year. To think it will help Leni Robredo in 2022 is a sentimental but foolhardy, and ultimately counterproductive repolishing of the vanished glory of the 1986 EDSA People Power. It is what it is.

   There’s no denying that right now the bulk of Leni’s supporters are middle-class to upper middle class.  It is the most socially and economically upward-mobile class, one that has the greatest capacity to shape public opinion and excite voter participation. The goal of the Leni Robredo campaign has to be to increase the volume of that base, spilling beyond class divisions and not just to raise its awareness temperature.

   I realize, of course, that preparation-wise, I am Monday-morning-quarterbacking here. The deadline for new voter registration is past.  The success of the Obama campaign was largely due not to its campaign messaging but in effectively bringing out the vote. You must assume that your supporters will vote for you 100%. The true mission, therefore, is to draw the highest turnout possible. US Democrats in state, city and county levels literally went door-to-door in 2015, even escorting youths to voter registration centers a full year before the campaign even started. It makes you shudder to wonder how many of these young animated Leni supporters today actually remembered, or even bothered to register? If they did not register to vote, they can shout themselves hoarse all they want, or storm the digital ramparts of social media but they cannot deliver the only thing they can guarantee Leni: their all-important one vote. 

   It hardly matters now. The fight throughout the remainder of the election period will now be two-pronged: First, to ensure that the vote of the Leni Robredo base is brought out on election day. No more expansion is possible here.  Second,   to make the best effort to turn the biggest possible number of antagonistic voters around. Any expansion is possible only here.

   This is not something you can accomplish by preaching to the choir.  That doesn’t  teach the choir any new songs, it just enables them to sing louder. But noise alone will not win the campaign. The most clever memes on Facebook will not reach the rural yokels who don’t even own a cellphone or have even heard of the internet.

   Fortunately, the Leni Robredo campaign has one thing going for them: Leni Robredo.  All they have to do is just let her talk. Her launching speech is a veritable clinic on how to message correctly: clear, concise, conscienticizing but not condemning and most of all credible.

   If any single dominant group of supporters tries to interfere with her honest messaging, to brand her more sharply or to add fire to her belly, they will rue the day when they realize that all they helped her accomplish is to  snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. © 2021 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON