‘Llamas also predicted a bruising contest between the Marcoses and the Dutertes during the campaign for the mid-term polls, with the latter likely to fight tooth and nail…’
DURING a recent media forum at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan, former Malacanang spokesperson Salvador Panelo and former political affairs adviser Ronald Llamas (under the PNoy administration) spoke of two different “worlds” when asked about the current socio-political situation as the mid-term elections approach. While Llamas gave a vivid perspective of how the Dutertes have been losing ground due to various legislative probes, Panelo opted to paint a glowing picture of political fortunes that couldn’t go wrong for the former President and his family.
To Panelo, the level of popularity of Vice President Sarah Duterte has not changed even as three major national surveys, as Llamas pointed out, showed her ratings were declining.
Llamas said the Marcos administration’s apparent demolition job against the VP is driven by legitimate issues such as the huge and unaccountable confidential funds of her office and her refusal to cooperate with the probing congressional committee, as well as her rift with First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos. The alleged involvement of her husband and a brother in the P64 billion drugs smuggling in connivance with a Customs official then is resurfacing as an election issue.
Llamas is convinced that if the administration slate dominates next year’s elections with only one or two Duterte-aligned senators and with the majority in the House of Representatives controlled by Malacanang, the Dutertes would lose much of their influence in the presidential elections in 2028.
Llamas also predicted a bruising contest between the Marcoses and the Dutertes during the campaign for the mid-term polls, with the latter likely to fight tooth and nail to take the upper hand by unloading their remaining political and financial resources.
The intrusion and unabated aggression of China into the West Philippine Sea certainly cannot be confined to her father’s twisted condoning of a foreign “invasion,” leaving the Vice President inheriting the deepening mistrust of a disgruntled people.
Less than a week before the 56th anniversary of the Tau Gamma Phi Fraternity, Ren Joseph Bayan, 18, was brutally beaten and killed in a hazing incident in Jaen, Nueva Ecija. The founding fathers of the fraternity have issued a public statement condemning another fatal hazing incident involving their wayward members.
They also announced that the main ruling body, Tau Gamma Phi Global, with its roots at UP Diliman, no longer recognizes any chapter in any college, university, high school or community that continues to defy the law and refuses to depart from tradition by practicing hazing in their initiation rites.
Several fatal victims were neophytes of Tau Gamma chapters at Adamson University, Phil College of Criminology and the University of Santo Tomas that have ignored the stronger Anti-Hazing Law of 2018. Numerous community groups. especially those in Metro Manila, including those randomly formed, continue to use the fraternity’s name and have reportedly engaged in similar violence during initiation rites.
The series of fatal hazing violence plaguing Tau Gamma has stemmed from its old and defiant National Executive Council that has embraced and promoted unlawfully the tradition of physical hazing.
Manila Mayor Honey Lacuna has a really tough fight on her hands, going up against Isko Moreno. Her camp has acknowledged Moreno as a formidable opponent in next year’s polls.
Lacuna has expressed her deep disappointment over Moreno’s disregard of his repeated assurances that he will not run as mayor for Manila anew.
Well, a double-talking politician is common in our political culture, but the real tragedy in our time is that voters are easily taken by the glamor and glitter surrounding most of them.
