“Let’s go back to the Bible.”
The Bible teaches Christians that one reaps what one sows. This piece of biblical sagacity is merely an iteration of a fact of natural life, viz., that that which you sow is what you will reap. One cannot sow one thing and expect to reap another; that’s not natural.
From the 2016 electoral season to the electoral season that ended recently, presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his supporters have been trying mighty hard to prove Nature wrong, sowing one thing and expecting to reap something else. Marcos & Co. think that they can pull off their contra-Nature campaign strategy.
For six years – 2016 to 2022 – the Marcos political machine has been trying to destroy Vice President Leni Robredo, who defeated Marcos Jr. in the 2016 vice presidential race. Mr. Marcos’ vast array of trolls has been throwing everything at the vice president except the proverbial kitchen sink. The trolls have maligned, insulted, verbally disfigured and in every way hurt Robredo, her official standing and her candidacy.
Marcos’ Leni-destruction apparatus has gone beyond the Vice President herself. Her immediate family, consisting of three daughters, also became targets of the Marcos trolls’ vile operations during this year’s campaign. The latest pre-election assault on the young Robredo family was the attack on one of the daughters. In so doing, the Marcos trolls crossed the red line drawn by the nation’s second-highest official.
Yet throughout this year’s electoral season, Marcos Jr. , his running mate Sara Duterte and their entire apparatus incomprehensibly campaigned on the theme of unity. A perfect perversion of the New Testament admonition to throw back bread when stones are being thrown at you. “Unity” was proclaimed by the UniTeam in their rallies and campaign materials while their trolls were simultaneously savaging VP Leni.
Now with the election results favoring them, Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte want the nation to unite.
The UniTeam may not realize it – or, if it does, it does not really care – but the trolls’ unrelenting attacks on her have hurt VP Leni very deeply. The nation’s second-highest official is a sensitive person and all the false and vile things that have been thrown at her for six years on social media have taken their toll on her and her family. Political candidates are not supposed to be onion-skinned, but the Marcos Jr. electoral apparatus – especially the trolls – have way exceeded the bounds of decency and fairness.
Robredo and her millions of volunteers uniting with Marcos, Duterte and the UniTeam? Not gonna happen. For that, Mr. Marcos has only himself to blame.
Back to the Bible. One can reap only what one has sown. If you sowed disunity, you cannot reap unity.