Why is Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go always leading in surveys for the senatorial race? Well, the answer is that those surveys are commissioned surveys, and it appears that Go has been busy winning in those types of surveys, weeks after other surveys did not find overtaking his rivals. Moreover, there is a subtext to surveys favorable to Go. He is now engaged in a battle to take over the cult of Duterte supporters while Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio is busy organizing the defense of her father before the International Criminal Court (ICC.)
While Go is naturally filling up space in broadsheets and tabloids, one of which he purportedly owns, Sara is also talking about her own surveys, with a firm known as WR Numero giving her a 30.2% favorability rating among adults if she were to run in the 2028 presidential elections. So there, Sara Duterte and Bong Go are busy conditioning the minds of the electorate and the politically orphaned Duterte backers that they should take over the mantle of leadership of the republic and Dutertistan. Both of them do not deserve the vote, and neither of them has shown they are presidential timber three years hence.
After Sara Duterte split with the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his cousin Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez over political wranglings at the House of Representatives and she went to town accusing Marcos and Romualdez of crafting a graft-ridden budget, she actually launched a campaign to pressure Marcos Jr. to resign, a call raised by Rodrigo Duterte since 2023 over what he called the former’s “fractured leadership.” In no uncertain terms, Sara reminded Marcos Jr. that he owes her a debt of gratitude since without the “invincible” Duterte forces, his 2022 presidential campaign was doomed. This explains why Sara practically thought that she was entitled to the defense portfolio, which was denied her, and had to settle for the Department of Education (DepEd) and a battalion of security men for the Office of the Vice President (OVP), the number of which has been reduced.
Since she is a heartbeat away from the presidency, her threats about “decapitating” Bongbong and having him and his wife, Liza Marcos, and Romualdez, too, killed by a hitman if she were assassinated is actually reflective of her desire to gain power immediately. Of course, there is no such thing as “conditional threat,” “conditional graft,” “conditional bribery,” and “conditional corruption,” but there are conniptions and hissy fits, particularly from kids who do not get their toys or lollipops. Indeed, the call for Marcos Jr.’s resignation is an amateur move. However, Go must be laughing somewhere out there as Sara got impeached over her misused P612.5-million confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) in both the OVP and DepEd. Note that Digong failed to anoint Go as his successor due to that pesky Team Unity bit and the unceasing wooing of Sara by Imee Marcos, who just abandoned the Alyansa ng Bagong Pilipino (ABP) senatorial slate. With Sara expected to have an awful time before, during and after the impeachment trial before the Senate, Go will have all the time to reorganize the politically-orphaned Duterte backers while campaigning and commissioning more surveys to condition the minds of voters that he is the pacer of the Senate race without having crafted any significant law.
Go, whose name has been intertwined with Pharmally and its executives like Linconn Ong and the Indian brother and sister team Mohit and Twinkle Dargani, who were busted before they could flee to Singapore via the notorious escape route known as Davao City, should now be busy counting his marbles. He failed to get the presidential draft in 2022 and 2028 should be his year. Just to remind voters, Go was the one who introduced Michael Yang to Duterte, who met Yang’s group in Southern China before he threw his hat into the 2016 presidential race. Surely, the Duterte camp did not get pennies and dimes from Shenzhen’s business elite or even shady characters. The Sammy Uys of Mindanao and other ethnic Chinese big businessmen surely need a compatriot to protect and defend their interests. They need Go, not Lloyd Christopher Lao, who has been indicted for the Pharmally mess.
Unlike Sara, who has been overusing the victim card to champion the cause of his detained father in The Hague, Go has been doing the rounds vis praise releases, reminding the people that Digong reduced criminality, stopped the operations of drug syndicates, and pushed infrastructure projects. Of course, Digong failed to stop crime in three months as he had promised and nip in the bud the scourge of drug addiction in six months. Go should have a lot of explaining to do as to why the number of addicts soared during the Duterte regime as confirmed by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Administration (PFEA.) Yet, being the good team that he is, Go’s surveys surprisingly put Willie Revillame in the winning column along with Bato de la Rosa, Philip Salvador and even Rodante Marcoleta. Surely, this survey has been met with revulsion.
Surely, Go should also brush up on the job description of a senator. First and foremost, a senator is a lawmaker, which means he should eschew pork barrel and a share of the annual loot. His work is about crafting laws that hew closely to the mandate set by the Constitution, which is to promote, protect and defend the welfare of the Filipino people with decent jobs and security of tenure and better educational, health, medical and educational services. Leave the job of helping fire and disaster victims to the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD), the Bureau of Fire Protection (its business should not be to protect fires), and the local government units (LGUs.) Do not write pathetic press releases that have remote relevance to statutory construction. There has been an oversupply of pablum these days and to help people maintain their sanity, Go should stop adding sophomoric narratives that people do not really appreciate.
As to Sara, bless her heart, she will have to work well with her counsel and lawyers who would debunk the mountain of evidence already produced by ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas and Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel, the three lawmakers that really got Sara’s goat for pushing the investigation into the CIF mess and the loss of billions of DepEd funds. By the way, Castro and Brosas are running for the Senate under the Makabayan Coalition. They are certainly much better than the Duterte bets that were suddenly thrust into the winning column by one survey firm. Castro and Brosas deserve your vote. As to Go and others? They deserve the boot. (DIEGO MORRA)
