The Manila Times

Are the Pinks up to something evil?

RIGOBERTO D. TIGLAO

THAT the Pinks refuse to accept the total routing of Leni Robredo and claim cockamamie theories on how their candidate was cheated merely confirm the suspicion that they have been living in a fictional world, in which they are a superior species and the sole guardians of morality.

But even I didn’t expect that they, or at least their leaders, could be plotting something really evil to stop the people’s loud and clear verdict to choose Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. as their president.

A former “Pinklawan” the other day relayed to me a message she got, and says many of her (former) comrades appear to have received the same message:

“If you know of volunteers willing to help. This is from 1Sambayan:

“From Ombudsman CarpioMorales and Justice Tony Carpio. They need 100 volunteers NOW to help validate 10,000 election results.

1. Contact person - Ria Dam 091730 -----. (redacted)

2. 3pm onwards today. They have laptops set up at Mondragon Center at Salcedo Village. Now, if they can bring their own laptop better, so they can have more volunteers.

3. Justice Tony Carpio said that they will need them now before 7PM. PLS PASS.”

I was unable to contact former ombudsman Morales nor retired Justice Carpio to verify whether they really made a call for volunteers. What could this mean?

On the surface, nothing’s wrong with it, as it would seem to be a mere citizens’ effort to validate for themselves — that BBM won not because of cheating. Obviously they believe that BBM’s lead of 17 million was through cheating.

However, it could also be a plot to discredit the elections. They could rig their “validation” though some kind of software — with the volunteers unaware of this, with Morales,

Carpio, with ranking Church members, claiming in a press conference that they found “proof” of massive cheating.

If Carpio is involved here, he must have been encouraged by the fact that his Big Lie of the Marcos family’s unpaid “P203 billion” estate taxes has had a lot of mileage, quoted even days before and after the election by Western media and in Facebook posts.

They are delusional if that is their plan: I don’t think anybody will buy their “validation.” I suspect that is even illegal since the Comelec has to approve any review of election returns, and require their representatives to oversee such a project, as in the case of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting’s operations. The Pinks may have been so exasperated over its operations and reports that the elections were devoid of any cheating that could affect the results.

I use the word “evil,” which I seldom, if ever, use, to emphasize the fact that while this validation plot certainly won’t work, their idea is so bad it is evil.

It attempts to discredit our elections, the core of democracy, the real exercise of people power. That it could have been undertaken is really a feat, involving half a million of our public school teachers as inspectors in 37,000 schools. If they think their gimmick could trigger a coup or a People Power against BBM, they are insane.

Still at it

Just three days after the elections that had BBM winning by a landslide, Robredo’s main propaganda venue, the US-funded Rappler is still at it, giving us a preview of the worst kind of biased reportage it would undertake on the new president.

It had as its main story the other day a piece entitled “Tycoons booze up at Marcos’ victory party.” The headline is shamelessly wrong.

The tycoons weren’t “boozing up,” an American slang expression for a group of males getting drunk usually on hard liquor. The accompanying photo indeed showed two bottles of wine on the table and one being opened, I think by BBM’s close friend since college days, Iñigo Zobel. But “boozing up”?

It wasn’t a victory party: BBM’s small circle of rich friends from way back (and brother-in-law Gregorio Araneta) decided to be among the first to congratulate him (May 9 late evening when the first trickle of results already indicating a landslide), and visited him at his campaign headquarters in Mandaluyong. They weren’t the only ones to do so, with the headquarters by 9 p.m. being filled with greeters, mainly politicians.

What was supposed to be a report was Rappler’s biased opinion piece, with its last sentence in the genre of a cheap shot: “Did these tycoons pop the champagne to celebrate Marcos’ victory or the prospects for their businesses?”

What’s worse is the Pink propagandists (or maybe Rappler itself) spread the lie in social media, adding another big lie — that the party was undertaken at the posh Solaire hotel and paid for by Kim Wong, notoriously alleged to be linked to illegal gambling operations in Manila. Kim Wong? Not even his old friend Isko Moreno would touch him with a ten-foot pole.

What the hell is this? Rappler editor Maria Ressa has been convicted of libel, her internet outfit ordered by the Securities and Exchange Commission to cease operations because it violates the constitutional ban on foreign money in media. Yet this American continues to ride roughshod in media, spreading her lies. Why isn’t Ressa thrown in jail and her lying Rappler closed down?

And those UP Red punks still call President Duterte a tyrant?

Front Page

en-ph

2022-05-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://digitaledition.manilatimes.net/article/283115662549067

The Manila Times