Column: The opposition’s narrow, viable path

Today’s column answers a question my column raised last week, and which some readers responded to by email. My reading of the situation, in sum: Go early, go big, go local, go—and others will follow. Published on May 25, 2021.

I argued last week that Vice President Leni Robredo “has a narrow but viable path to the presidential palace—if she wants it.” I believe that way forward also applies to the possible presidential candidacy of Senate Minority Leader Frank Drilon. Allow me to trace the outline of that path.

As the Danish saying goes, it is, of course, difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But in August and September 2015 I tried to discern the “path to victory” of four potential presidential candidates: Mar Roxas, Jojo Binay, Grace Poe, and Rody Duterte. The columns were attempts not so much at reading omens as analyzing factors that could spell victory in the May 2016 vote.

The following factors help define that narrow but viable path in 2022:

Column: Can democratic forces make common cause?

Published on March 16, 2021.

It should be a no-brainer, right? It’s right there in the name we use to identify the various groups: pro-democracy. But while preserving what remains of the democratic space is the primary objective, the bitter truth is “democracy” and “rule of law” are not winning messages. Even in the “snap elections” of 1986, Cory Aquino did not defeat Ferdinand Marcos on a restoration-of-democracy message; rather, the message after 20 years of Marcosian misrule was, simply, change. “Tama na, sobra na, palitan na.”

The idiomatic English equivalent, “We’ve had enough, this is too much, it’s time to change it,” lacks the punch of the original, but it has the advantage of reminding us that the last five years of abuse, bloodshed, cruelty, democratic erosion, and failure have brought us back to 1986: We really have had enough of the incompetence; the brutality is too much; it really is time to reject the incumbent.