đź“·: Bagong Alyansang Makabayan | FB
On Monday, May 11, 2025, voters should exercise their right to suffrage by weaning the grain from the chaff, rejecting the likes of Camille Villar, who ignorantly claims that public service is in the Villar DNA, which is bad science, and that their family’s wealth was amassed by dint of hard work, not by exploiting their workers, grabbing lands from agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) or taking advantage of their positions in government to enjoy perpetual tax amnesties for their companies in Las Pinas City. Remember the millions of residents in 134 water districts that dismally control and who are voting en masse to teach the Villars a lesson.
Then there is Imee Marcos, who continues to amaze many Filipinos why she is sticking with the Duterte camp, thinking like Villar that they can get the votes from the rival camp because politics is an addition. The trouble is that they won’t get what they want. Imee’s probe into the mooted issue of Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest has been dubbed as pathetic since it hardly earned her political brownie points. Certainly not from the family of Archimedes Trajano, who was tortured and murdered by Marcos’ bodyguards after he asked her one disturbing question in a forum. The award by a US court has not been satisfied by Imee, just as the wrong disbursement of tobacco excise taxes in Ilocos Norte when she was governor was not resolved satisfactorily.
Neither should any voter opt for Duterte clowns running for the Senate led by the overrated Bong Go, who has not authored any law of significance and whose “popularity” is pushed by a broadsheet that he purportedly co-owns and another one that uses his badly-written press releases with photos to boot. Of course, the notorious Bato de la Rosa is more likely than not to be indicted as well in the Duterte case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and no matter what an alphabet soup firms does to buttress him would change the fact that he was the first enforcer of the war on drugs that scored 30,000 fatalities. Duterte was also responsible for the deaths of 422 activists through overt and covert actions of his hit squads, including those moonlighting at the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC.)
Erwin Tulfo and his brother Ben Tulfo have not redeemed their promise to return the P60-million they secured from a contract with beloved sister Wanda Tulfo-Teo when she was tourism secretary under Duterte. Wanda said she didn’t know that his brothers ran the firm that snagged an ad deal from her department. Such a wonderful excuse doesn’t hold water. Erwin himself was manhandled by Avsecom soldiers for a purported botched dollar salting operation during martial law, which was the reason why he joined the US military, gained US citizenship on what the US Embassy said was a bogus birth certificate but the fraudulent acquisition of such citizenship does not absolve him of his US caper, which became the basis for the Commission on Appointments (CA) not to renew his hold on the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD) under Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government. Erwin is also linked to a notorious power broker long involved in illegal gambling, but who has Malacanang’s ear. Raffy Tulfo, now sitting in the Senate, also investigated Mel Robles, the head honcho at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), who was the subject on complaints by lotto outlets and other parties for dubious draws, but Robles has not been charged or kicked out by the Ombudsman. What gives?
Being a commentator or mediator of domestic conflicts does not entitle one to a seat in the Upper Chamber, and the Tulfos do not deserve your vote. They have different types of logic and politics, Ben Tulfo claims, so they are not a political dynasty. Such profundity is better addressed to Willy Revillame, Philip Salvador, and the other senatorial bets of the Dutertes, like Vic Rodriguez, Raul Lambino and Rodante Marcoleta. All of them are damaged goods in the damaged Duterte political dynasty’s damaged slate. People should likewise not show mercy to returning senatorial candidates like Tito Sotto and Lito Lapid, who should enjoy their twilight years by watching the famed Manila Bay Sunset daily, if the concrete jungle created by reclamation projects would allow them at all. Pia Cayetano, being the architect of the POGO law that legitimized the operations of online gambling for the Chinese and the countless pig slaughter scams, deserves to just mount her bicycle daily to stay fitter than fit. Losing a Cayetano at the Senate is no big deal since a significant brother-sister act in the chamber was as rare as a storm in the Sahara Desert.
But then, you have Bong Revilla, who used to study at Imus Institute, and who has been ordered to return P124 million to the national treasury by the Ombudsman due to the pork barrel scam, and he wants to spend more years at the Senate for whatever reason we don’t know. The people are stuck with Robinhood Padilla, who topped the 2022 Senate race, but who still cannot show his national constituency that he has mastered Robert’s Rules and has competently discharged his duties as a senator of the republic and head of such a critical committee as the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments. A cost-benefit analysis of his performance at the Senate would reveal that he was not a net gain for the republic. Accompanying the Dutertes in The Hague is not legislative work.
For voters who have seen that Marcos Jr.’s Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas (ABP) is just the flip side of the same rotten coin of Philippine politics, they should go for candidates who are not interested in allowing the national wealth to be squandered in doleouts championed by favored partylists and used as bribes to boost their electoral campaigns. Moreover, candidates with clear platforms and an agenda to dismantle the Rice Liberalization Law (RLL), abolish the NTF-ELCAC, raise the minimum wage by P1,200 nationwide, pursue genuine agrarian reform, and promote a real independent foreign policy opposed to the hegemony of the US and China. The Makabayan Coalition’s senatorial slate provides an alternative to the traditional patronage politics of Marcos Jr. and the Dutertes. The Makabayan Senate bets are the following: Jerome Adonis; Jocelyn Andamo; Ronnel Arambulo; Arlene Brosas; Teddy Casino; France Castro; Mimi Doringo; Mody Floranda; Aminah Lidasan; Liza Maza, and; Danilo Ramos. For partylist, the obvious choice is Bayan Muna.
The financial hanky-panky of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio at the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) as well as her leading role at NTF-ELCAC and the misuse of funds for the 2025 budget through unprogrammed appropriations (UAs), the bloating of the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the plunder of P90-billion of Philhealth funds by the Department of Finance (DOF) for the Maharlika sovereign wealth fund (SWF) and other programs and projects to the detriment of Filipinos needing medical and health care and other unexplained expenditures show in broad daylight that they have become butchers in the pigpen. By their criminal optimism in snatching political power, these politicians have been acting as if they were hoodlums pouncing on the estimated P1.2-trillion that the national budget loses each year. This is bureaucrat-capitalism at its worst, and it fuels the avarice of political dynasties. No wonder the state has been zeroing in on the Makabayan Coalition, Bayan Muna and other progressive partylists. They have the people’s interest at heart and the agenda for what a just and prosperous Philippines should be. (DIEGO MORRA)
