“The best and the brightest?”
Part 1
The current selection process has all but been scrapped in favor of one believed to be more popular and willing to throw away his billions for an office that in fact betrays our idealism about democracy. Our system of selecting “the best and the brightest” through a convention has all but been shelved. Today, there is no such thing as a convention where politicians are nominated through that process.
The party convention as a democratic process takes the responsibility of selecting a candidate who will be allowed to run for president, and the one who will be nominated as presidential candidate is given a free hand to pick his running mate, a practice we literally lifted from the American political system.
The beauty of having to hold a convention is to allow the party to select its candidates, and allow delegates to vote the most qualified under the law. The nomination is usually in the form of a convention to select from among the delegates who will be the front-runner on the basis of political experience, seniority, and the position he holds in the party. Popularity within the party and record of legislation like the number of bills passed is taken into account once elected legislator. The process is often termed as a system pre-qualification. The convention now serves as their biodata on how qualified and competent they are.
In the rush to implement their concept of our shoddy democracy, the saintly hypocrites abolished the safeguards of the nitty-gritty party convention done by the nomination of candidates, accreditation of poll watchers, minority representation in the Commission on Elections, and in providing accredited political parties to have poll watchers and entitled to have copies of the election canvass returns.
It also abolished the system of sectoral representation and adopted instead the party-list representative, and the computerization of our electoral system that resulted instead in the wholesale cheating of election returns with the lackeys amazingly coming out as winners including the election of committed communists in Congress.
The most prurient is that the Church and the remaining praetorian guards of US imperialism subcontracted our electoral system to foreign contractors, with our own former Comelec chairman now hiding in the US. Smartmatic exemplifies our deep addiction to our make-believe democracy which in truth is a complete farce. The hypocrites made it easy to junk the Election Code for the simple reason that it has all the shades of “dictatorial legacy.”
It has to be pointed out that the lack of enthusiasm in the coming electoral exercise has nothing to do with the current leadership of the Duterte administration but due to the dwindling amount of funds pouring into the coffers of candidates from the opposition gunning for the presidency. It is their lack of financial resources that is hampering their decision to run or even to field their own candidate. The decline of the US colonial empire resulted in the dwindling of financial support to sustain its political apparatus.
It is an open secret that the US has been funding candidates openly embracing its aggressive ideology. During the period when the US economy was at its peak, support for its lackeys came from various sources, either directly provided by the US intelligence community particularly the CIA or from the various US corporations operating in the country.
Funds from the US intelligence community partake of the budget allocated to it with the single objective of ensuring the victory of a candidate openly supporting the US policy. In short, they act as handlers for known puppets like some kind of pre-arranged boxing “supervised” by the mafia bosses. US private corporations also seek favor but always make sure they are certified stooges.
During that period, US companies virtually dominated global trade and the choice of candidates they wanted to win was easy picking. US companies seeking to develop their personal friendship with the candidate can easily be influenced once elected. This explains why during the era when the US was awash with money, candidates supportive of their cause came in troves. It is not only financial support that they seek but the financial support through advertising arms and media outlets.
As the Cold War intensified, expenses in support of US candidates were invariably expanded such that they included a budget to discredit candidates of the communist, the nationalist or any candidate that takes the position of opposing the US policy, particularly on its trade relations and on the status of the US bases. Any candidate that exhibits signs of anti-Americanism or identified as nationalist is automatically treated as a political pariah. It is not only the honesty and character of the person that is being maligned but most importantly, he is denied the funds essential to project himself as a serious candidate.
One of the important aspects that allowed the US to control public opinion is their tight control of our local media. The US has succeeded in controlling the media to a point of interpreting it as “freedom of the press.” Any candidate who may attempt to restrain our unbridled exercise of freedom, having in mind just putting social order to society, is readily accused of having dictatorial tendencies like President Duterte.
The cry for unbridled freedom blends well with their concept of free enterprise. The oligarchy and the Church could hardly delineate their view of freedom of the press from the freedom of the oligarchy in their business interest as media tycoons. This issue gets murky when the government tacitly allows foreign-owned mass media to operate television, radio stations, and disseminate foreign publications to air and propagate ideas contrary to that of the government.
The financial difficulty of the US is apparent. The US and UK have their official news outlet like the Voice of America and BBC to our local radio stations. One apparently foreign-owned television station like CNN Philippines is defiantly operating in the country in gross violation of the Constitution. These stations make an hourly broadcast of events. One must observe that foreign-controlled media do not only compete with our local media but often discredit the government-operated and radio stations and television despite the ruling made by the SEC and MTRCB against them.
It has to be clarified that the Duterte administration came to assert the sovereignty of the Republic. The concept of giving the government what it wants to convey to its people has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Has it entered the minds of these media operators whether their own government allows foreign media to operate, criticize their own government, or take the steps to support their stooge short of waging a rebellion to ensure the victory of their candidate against our own government?