The 2016 campaign as a guide

During the campaign period in the 2016 presidential election, the propaganda spiels of then candidates Rodrigo Duterte for president and Tomas Osmeña for mayor caught my attention. In all likelihood and judging from elections results, those very well-conceived propaganda materials were among the factors that swayed many voters. Indeed, they were the articulations of what the national and city leaderships should be all about. While both candidates were still courting votes, the slogans they crafted into their political advertisements hit the proverbial nail on its head. Many of us liked the kind of governance we heard and told about for they seemed to approximate our collective aspirations. But to avoid cluttering this write-up, let me recall specific items that served as the meat of the 2016 election propaganda materials.

Duterte galloped on to unprecedented margins of victory on two pinpoint issues. First, he would rid our country of illegal drugs in three months. We knew that narcotics proliferated in all corners of our society. Both the rich and the poor were afflicted by the disease although in different levels of dependence and addiction. So, we embraced the golden promise to cleanse our country of the dreaded affliction. Second, Duterte, said he would ride a jet ski to the Islands dotting the West Philippine Sea and shoot all Chinese illegally occupying our territory. It surely was a hyperbole but in the context of our national sovereignty, we took that bravado of an announcement as fuel to our national pride.

On Osmeña’s part, I remember the political advertisements he placed in television coverage of NBA games. The choice of the live games as a carrier of propaganda was itself a brilliant stroke. (By the way, I am anticipating that when the NBA playoffs begin, his ads will again be aired). I never doubted his political spots were expensive and if they were included in his Statement of Contribution and Expenses submitted to the Comelec, they should be eye-popping. In any case, the ads definitely worked on our imagination. First, Osmeña projected that our peace and order situation was terrible. Each short video showed killings and crimes against property as rampant. I surmised Osmeña’s message to be that if elected, he would reduce the city’s crime to idealistic levels. His other promise was equally relevant as it was touching. After highlighting mounds of uncollected garbage, Osmeña assured us of a clean city in his administration, as if he had not been our city mayor before.

Fast forward to the present. In the national scene, the opposition, visibly diminished in number, wants us to reckon the monumental failure of the president to keep his promises. President Duterte’s war on drugs has passed the three-month period. We are now on the third year of the Duterte administration and, even considering the brutal killings of thousands of supposed narcotics peddlers, the drug menace is not licked. On his other promise, the president’s inaction on the seizure and occupation of portions of Philippine territory by China defies conventional ideals of patriotism. In fact, not only has he apparently abandoned our status as a free, independent, and sovereign state by allowing a bully of a state to intrude on our land, he seems to have committed treason by aiding the Chinese, in some perceptible ways.

Here in the city, Osmeña’s promise in 2016 is unfulfilled. In his watch (and in no other mayor’s administration), three of my colleagues in the legal profession, namely attorneys Solima, Ungab, and Castro, along with many ordinary citizens, were murdered. Incidents of thievery and robbery are noticeably increasing. There is a breakdown of peace and order. Contrary to Osmeña’s NBA-plugged political ads for a safe city, Cebuanos are more afraid to walk our streets. If I should judge his quest for re-election by the very standards he set in 2016, he is, to me, such a failure that I will not vote for him. [email protected]