Grace under fire

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‘Makes me wonder who they will blame if their earnestly prayed for miracle does not materialize in May.’

THIS is your fault,” went one Tweet written in Filipino that caught my eye. “I hope it forever becomes a burden on your conscience.”

The “your” being referred to here is Sen. Grace Poe, and the “it” or what she is being blamed for is the fact that we had to go through six years of a Duterte administration.

Grace is being blamed because she refused a “last two minutes” offer by Mar Roxas and the Liberals to withdraw in their favor, because the Liberals (aka Yellows, now mostly Pink), believed in their heart of hearts that had Grace withdrawn in their favor then most if not all of her voters – some 9 million strong – would have dashed to the LP, voted for Mar, and, voila, Mar would have won with 18 million votes (that’s his 9 million plus her 9 million) versus Duterte’s 16 million.

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In fact, using that math all the Liberals needed was about 8.5 million of her 9 and Roxas would have won. The balance of 500,000 could have gone to Duterte and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Of course, Grace Poe refused to withdraw — and I as one of her supporters rejoiced that she didn’t — and the rest is history.

Oh… the blame isn’t all about 2016. The Liberals/Yellows-turned-Pink now in effect blame their status of having to play catch-up to Ferdinand Marcos II (or is it Junior?) also on Grace.

I was so tempted to comment on the public post but chose not to, because I suspect that the author is so set in that belief that engaging him in a discussion would be a simple waste of time. But thoughts immediately sprung to mind (why didn’t he be the gentleman and withdraw?) as I read the post and all I could do was shake my head. In fact, in my book, the reason why many of the Yellows-turned-Pink are now scrambling to achieve a miracle on May 9 is precisely because of their line of thinking that blames Grace Poe – and everybody else for that matter – for their debacle in 2016 and also in 2019.

Blame everyone but themselves.

When a candidate of the administration loses – and loses badly, – the fault can only be laid squarely on the feet of the administration itself. It simply means that all those years it was in paper with full control of all the levers of government did not leave any lasting imprint on the general public so much so that they could be swayed by trolls and analytics and algorithms and all that jazz to vote against its own candidate.

Put it another way – the Yellows lost in 2016 and again in 2019 because the Yellows could no longer connect with majority of our countrymen. So much so that, as allegedly, the people were easily taken in by fake news.

And that wasn’t the fault of Grace Poe.

Fast forward to 2022 and as an armchair analyst of this election I see this type of consciousness as further proof that the segment of our political class that was victorious at EDSA has truly lost its bearings. The fact that EDSA celebrations after the Ramos years began to attract less and less crowds never seems to have been a red flag to them. This, in election after election they have sallied forth waving the banner of EDSA and expecting the mass of the Filipino people to follow; and when the latter don’t, we’ll, that’s because the people are stupid, they don’t know their history, or they’ve sold their souls for thirteen pieces of silver.

Or all of the above.

And so they blame Grace Poe.

Makes me wonder who they will blame if their earnestly prayed-for miracle does not materialize in May.

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