And then there was the guy who went to a 7-Eleven to buy one of those Gulp drinks with the candidates’ faces on them. He chose Mar Roxas and gave the store clerk a P100 bill.
The guy waited for his change until he could wait no longer. So he asked the store clerk.
Guy: Miss, where’s my change?
Clerk: Sir, you chose Mar. Don’t expect any change.
* * *
When Leni Robredo channeled her inner Rody Duterte (when Duterte was boosting his laggardly running mate, Alan Peter Cayetano) and asked her supporters not to vote for her if they were not voting for Mar Roxas, I thought she was just bragging. The Yellows have always been known for their hubris, I thought; Leni must have caught the disease hard by her constant association with the Aquino crowd.
Then I saw that Social Weather Stations survey where Robredo was supposed to have pulled off her spectacular “jump,” pulling abreast of Senator Bongbong Marcos in a statistical tie. I remembered the Liberal Party vice presidential candidate’s “love me, love Mar” request and thought I’d pay more attention to Jesse Robredo’s widow.
I think I found what I was looking for in a news item published yesterday in another newspaper, where a well-known Roxas-Robredo operative predicted that Mar could still make it to the presidency by riding on Leni’s supposedly surging survey numbers. This couldn’t be mere coincidence, I thought.
Advertising executive Yoly Villanueva-Ong is supposed to have created both the “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” slogan and the yellow ribbon-cum-dove logo for President Noynoy Aquino in the 2010 elections. According to the report, Ong said Robredo could help Roxas by “convert[ing] those who would choose the most decent candidate.”
“Those who are open to that kind of logic and process will probably be swayed by a word or two from Leni Robredo, especially if they are already believers and supporters of Leni Robredo,” Ong said. To me, the report was not really intended to improve Roxas’ chances but to condition the people’s minds that Leni was going to win—never mind if there was really no explaining her rise to the top.
* * *
In certain political circles, the supposed jump of Robredo’s numbers is merely a prelude to a diabolical plot by the Yellows to remain in power even if Roxas loses. According to this theory, the LP has all but conceded that Roxas will lose and is now working to make Robredo win as vice president as the next best thing.
If, the theory goes, either Duterte or Vice President Jejomar Binay win the presidential race and Robredo makes it to Number 2, the plan to re-take Malacañang Palace will go into effect. (I confess I don’t know why there is no scenario for such a takeover if Senator Grace Poe makes it as president.)
The template was supposedly created right after Joseph Estrada won in 1998. That was the year the Yellows and their elitist backers were run over by the unstoppable Jeep ni Erap, which made it all the way to Malacañang even if Erap himself was eventually forced to step down.
Just like what they did to Estrada, the Yellows will start working from Day 1 of either a Duterte or Binay presidency to remove the new occupant of Malacañang. And just like in 2001, the Yellows and the elite will have Leni reprise the role of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the all-too-willing replacement of the ousted popular president who had the audacity to win even if he had not been chosen by the elite.
Depending on how fast it would take the Yellow-oligarch combine to oust the new president, Leni could serve as long as (or even longer than) Arroyo, who was gifted Erap’s unexpired term before winning a controversial election against Fernando Poe Jr. in 2004. Of course, almost immediately after Arroyo beat Poe and started to serve an elected six-year term, she ran afoul of her former backers, led by the sainted Cory Aquino and the Makati Business Club.
And so Gloria had to spend her last six years in office fighting off Cory and the oligarchs. Then Cory died in 2009 and the Yellows found their unlikely champion in her feckless slacker of a son—the rest of this unfortunate story, we already know.
It’s true that Arroyo didn’t start out as the Yellow’s designated replacement to Erap. But she was next in line and perfectly willing to undermine Estrada, which was why the elitist anti-Erap movement had no choice.
(Remember that Noli de Castro was also being groomed to replace Arroyo by the same crowd if she could be forced to step down after 2004. That didn’t happen because both parties could not agree on the “terms.”)
But Leni Robredo appears to have been vetted way ahead of the plan to make her replace Duterte or Binay. More on this in a coming piece.