THERE are three major factors explaining Filipinos’ overwhelming support for Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (BBM) in his bid for the presidency: Marcos, Duterte, and “Bongbong.”
First, Filipinos have never really believed the Big Lie propagated by the Yellows and the US Deep State for more than three decades — using three administrations’ government and media machinery — that Marcos was the Devil incarnate and his regime a Dark Age.
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SEVENTEEN days from today, we will be witnessing a seismic political earthquake, a historical watershed. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the most vilified political figure of our postwar history, will — as in legends of exiled princes of deposed, murdered fathers — take back, as it were, the throne, in this case, of ballots.
There is no doubt at this point that Marcos will be winning the presidency, getting at the very least 50 percent of votes, which means 16 million more votes than Leni Robredo‘s, if she gets 20 percent.
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I HAVEN’T witnessed such depths of depravity, due to consuming political ambition, in exploiting Filipinos’ religious sentiments, as those demonstrated by presidential candidate Leni Robredo‘s camp during the just concluded Holy Week.
The Filipinos’ revered image, the Black Nazarene, normally clothed in majestic red, was dressed up in Robredo’s campaign color pink — to make the ridiculous implied claim that even Jesus Christ was supporting her.
THREE candidates who have been at the bottom of the presidential contest in a press conference they called yesterday blasted Leonor Robredo, the runner-up who, however, has been getting only…
Swiss deposits part of Marcos estate
Retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio has made several big lies in his discussions over our South China Sea claims, many of which are being repeated even by otherwise intelligent people.
Now in the homestretch to the May elections, he’s created another Big Lie: presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. owes government P203 billion in estate or inheritance taxes. Carpio is hoping this Big Lie can stop Marcos from winning the presidency 31 days from now.
It’s a classic case of a Big Lie which an unscrupulous politician spreads for his electoral ambitions and which biased, or plain stupid media disseminates. The gullible candidate Isko Moreno has gone on to say silly things, such as that the “P203 billion” will feed 59 million Filipinos for a year. He has practically made it his platform of government, that if he wins the presidency, he will make it his priority to collect those unpaid estate taxes.
The forever anti-Marcos Philippine Daily Inquirer jumped on the fake issue, claiming in an editorial that the BIR isn’t doing its job if it doesn’t collect the P203 billion. That paper got that idea from Carpio who said: “What is the BIR waiting for? “
I find it astonishing that he forgets that when that tax deficiency was first issued in 1991 and when the Supreme Court allegedly made it “final and unappealable” in a decision in 1997, the administration in power was that of Fidel Ramos, in which Carpio was one of the most powerful Cabinet members, being the presidential legal counsel. He recommended for Bureau of Internal Revenue head Liwayway Vinzons-Chato, a colleague in the law profession. Why couldn’t they get the “tax” paid?
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THE presidential-preference poll by the Pedro Laylo Jr. outfit, undertaken from March 15 to 22 and leaked to media last week, was another nail on the coffin of Leni Robredo’s presidential bid.
The survey’s findings, that Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s lead of 59-63 percent to Robredo’s 17-21 percent — basically, unchanged since October — means he is unstoppable at this time. As a result, potential funders, even the stridently anti-Marcos elites like the Lopez clan and the leftist wife of a Hong Kong-based tycoon have decided to stop funding the loser’s campaign.
Sources said that several of “Pinklawan’s” campaign headquarters have been shut down, salaried staff have not been paid, and a major worry for them now is that Robredo won’t have any campaigners on the ground on May 9.
That would send the message that she has given up, with her supporters deciding just to stay home and not vote at all, or even to vote for Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. because of the bandwagon effect (uso-uso would be the translation) Filipinos are so prone to.
No wonder, the Pink Party in the past week has been desperately calling for “volunteers” — with little success. So shameful though has been the posts of Diwa Guinigundo, a fanatic Robredo supporter, asking God to “intercede” so “He remains in control.” It didn’t occur to him that, well, God might be preferring Marcos, and that he would be better off not mistaking the deity’s preferences by praying for instance for Russia to end its ruthless invasion of Ukraine, and save thousands of lives and relieve millions of Ukrainians from misery.
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A FRIEND’s niece — studying at UP Diliman — asked incredulously why I wasn’t voting for the university’s choice, Leonor Robredo. I didn’t want to ruin my friendship with her uncle by insulting her intelligence. So, I restrained myself and later Vibered to her the link to my column entitled “Robredo: Our worst and most useless vice president ever,” written in October 2019. Actually, she’s gotten much, much worse than my portrayal of her in that piece:
To very clearly see why Leonor Robredo — the Yellow cult’s last pathetic attempt to create a false idol — has been the republic’s worst vice president, one just has to remember our past vice presidents.
In comparison to these, she is an intellectual and political pygmy.
Let’s start with the most recent one. Jejomar Binay had been Makati mayor for six terms and, despite the Yellows’ intense campaign to paint him as corrupt in the last presidential elections, his role in Makati’s growth as the country’s premier financial district is incontestable.
Even as he won the vice-presidential post in 2010 against the Yellows, he helped President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd as chairman of the Housing Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC). He was also presidential adviser for OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) concerns and head of the Task Force OFW, which assisted OFWs who were maltreated by their employers to return to the Philippines with the assistance of the government.
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CHECK out presidential candidate Isko Moreno Domagoso’s recent statements, his recent screams on the campaign trail:
– “If I become president, I promise I will collect the P203 billion unpaid estate tax of the Marcos family”;
– “The P203-billion estate tax could feed rice to 59.7 million Filipinos daily for a year if the Bureau of Internal Revenue is able to collect it.”
Obviously on the same intellectual level as Isko is another candidate, Panfilo Lacson, who became was his echo chamber, pontificating that the “P203 billion estate taxes” won’t be collected if Marcos Jr. wins the presidency.
There is no P203 billion unpaid estate tax. A single scheming devious person, retired justice Antonio Carpio, invented that astronomical “unpaid tax” number. This is another proof of that adage attributed to Mark Twain: “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”
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THE P203 billion which presidential candidate Isko Moreno Domagoso and retired justice Antonio Carpio have been alleging are “unpaid estate taxes” the Marcoses owe government will go down in our political and media history as one of the most preposterous lies to have ever been given some attention. Thanks of course again to the virulent anti-Marcos Philippine Daily Inquirer and Rappler — the only two media outfits that’ve been screaming over it.
This “estate tax” brouhaha was concocted in a desperate move to breathe some life into candidate Moreno’s dying campaign; he has gone to town to disseminate that cock and bull story. However, by spreading the lie, Moreno has definitively demonstrated he is totally unfit to be president: he is either so gullible to believe the yarn invented by the ever-scheming Carpio or so unprincipled to spread something he himself knows is a fallacy.
That this is a colossal fabrication is easily gleaned from the fact that among the alleged Marcos assets on which the estate taxes were levied include stocks in San Miguel Corp. and Manila Bulletin, and shares of the late drug tycoon J.Y. Campos as well as such properties as Fort Ilocandia, the Coconut Palace, and the sugar lands of Roberto S. Benedicto in Negros. Why on earth would the Marcoses pay estate taxes on these?
Yes, Mr. Dumb candidate, these “unpaid estate taxes” include assets which the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) had sequestered in the 1980s. Many of these were ordered by the courts to be returned to their owners (in the San Miguel case, to Edgardo Cojuangco), or which the owner had surrendered to government, which then auctioned shares sold many decades ago.
As the current PCGG clarified on March 22 when Moreno’s party asked about this “unpaid estate taxes”: When the Cory government sequestered these assets, it “legally laid claim to them [and are in custodial legis],” and therefore beyond the Marcos rights over and liabilities arising from them. Even if the Marcoses wanted to pay the alleged estate taxes, their being in government’s custodial legis bars them from doing so.
The PCGG also disclosed in its letter that there was a “verbal agreement” in 2003 between it and the BIR to determine which among the properties the latter wanted to levy estate taxes on were sequestered and which were not. The PCGG and the BIR never got around to doing that chore, understandably as there were 300 lots and over 200 companies/shares in corporations the latter had levied estate taxes on.
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OUR presidential debates (and worse, the vice-presidential), if their formats are not drastically changed, are just a sheer waste of time. They deprive voters of a real opportunity to really know the candidates.
To have four, five debate participants, including those who would win only in an alternate universe, is ridiculous and absurd, and I am astonished at why the Comelec (Commission on Elections) and even private entities undertake these and seem to revel in having them as hyped-up events held in five-star hotel ballrooms.
That “Deep Probe” format is worse: how sadistic (I dare say, stupid) can its organizers be to have the likes of Jose Montemayor, who I swear had a mad look in his eyes and who can’t even fix his tie, and Jose Ma. Sison’s candidate, Leody de Guzman with his constant salesman’s grin, lectured us for half an hour with their nonsense with otherwise intelligent interlocutors ridiculously nodding their heads at their gibberish.
I admire the panelists though for their willpower in maintaining their deadpan looks, suppressing their laughter at the ridiculous responses of Montemayor and de Guzman.
Look, because I got so pissed off listening to these clowns the other day, I switched to Netflix — making me miss Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s segment, which I hear was very informative of the candidate. How many Filipinos did that?
