We have an election coming up, and there is a lot of arguments out there in the press. I saw one sign for Robredo in a shop window but it disappeared. Thre was a report that the cops are removing illegal election posters, but I can't confirm that...Are they taking it down?
The cook says BongBong Marcos (BBM) is popular. She knows half the town including the local NPA who are now not very active but still could be if they get mad.
there is a PhilStar article on why BBM is popular: he doesn't do negative campaigning and has his popular positions publicized (he is a big social media presence in a country where internet cafes and smart phones are used by many: heck, even my maid has one).
ah but should you trust the tech giants, who also are censoring the news to influence your vote, not only in the USA but here in the Philippines?
At a Senate committee hearing on Feb. 2, fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH reported that based on over 200 fact-checks since January 2022, trends showed that a "substantial volume" of disinformation are largely positive of Marcos Jr. At the same time, Robredo is the biggest victim of disinformation or negative messaging.
Twitter has also recently suspended over 300 accounts that are supportive of Marcos Jr., after violating the company's platform manipulation and spam policy.the author also claims BBMarcos has avoided mainstream media programs claiming bias/censorship by the elite press:
Inlong also noted the programs Marcos skipped are primarily consumed by the educated class, and much of the voting population would come from Class D or the masa.so now we have to ask: Can you see the fingers of the CIA in all of this?
as a Yank, I can see why the US interests want to stop Chinese aggression in the area, but since it was Obama who essentially gave China a green light to steal the Philippine areas of the West Philippine Sea (by telling PNoy to go to court instead of sending out our tiny coast guard to stop them physically), one cannot be sure what is going on.
Duterte tried to make nice with China, but China screwed him so he is starting to buy ships and make friends with other Asian countries (who rely on shipping that goes through the area that China is trying to steal) to push back.
But the Chinese takeover of the WPSea goes way back: hey, GMA also almost gave the area away but failed when the scam was publicized.
Sigh.
But people get mad when countries like China or the US push the Philippines around.
The social media here is full of Chinese trolls. But the US is trying to influence the Philippines in a more subtle way
Guess who funded a news site that opposed Duterte and maybe funded the press to overthrow the pro Russian president of the Ukraine awhile back, something that is also noted in this article.
To understand Filipino politics require one to recognize who is married to/related to or friends with whom... and where is their power base?
Since everyone is assumed to be corrupt, the common people will vote for the one that will at least try to help them economically, i.e. to get jobs and investments and send aid when disasters hit.
GMA is from Pampanga, so there has been a lot of development money to that poor area when she was president.
And Marcos base is in the far north, not Manila.
In the next election, it is again US vs China but popular opinon will stop any president from going too far to give away our sovereignty.
Leni is pro American. So the Yankee money will go to her? check lower part of this article. So Robredo is the pro American candidate, but BBM, like Duterte, will try to make nice with China. So is China funding them, or are they just using their own money?
Duterte figures that we are too weak to stop China, and he will try his best to protect the country but knows that we would lose a war, and he isn't seeing the US trying to help much.
so will this election be another fight between the Chinese candidate and the American one? Who knows.
Marcos, of course, is related to the ex dictator Marcos, who went too far with marshal law fighting the various insurgencies and killing/jailing mere activists while he was at it. And of course, he got rich plundering the country of billions. Ah, but Marcos claimed his wealth was Yamashita's gold: Which if true was money plundered from Malaysia and Singapore when the Japanese stole everything in sight.
Ironically, people figure BBM, like his father, is probably a thief, but hey, so is everyone else, so vote for the one who will actually be able to run the country.
As my husband Lolo used to say: They're all crooks
Finally, to confuse matters, there is the problem about outright voting fraud.
After the "hello Garci" scandal, where it was suspected that Garci had lots of ballots hidden in the back room to push the election of GMA, the government spent millions to buy electronic voting machines which were seen as guaranteeing an honest election
The source of the machines is Smartmatic, who has sold their technology to a lot of small countries. They use blockchain technology to secure the vote.
So no problem with cheating, right? Uh Oh. The Manila Times headline (Jan31,2022):(author has links to China so be warned).
Smartmatic's global controversies: Follow the money..
BBM claims the company allowed him to lose the election for VP, which is now held by Leni.
Notice the author reveals links between the usual suspects named in conspiracy theory websites (Including Soros' money).
All of this makes my head spin.
Smartmatic based their sales on the idea that they used blockchain to keep things safe. (I'm to old to learn about bit coin and block chain, sorry).
But the article discussion Smartmatic does mention something that the nuttier Trumpite conspiracy theoriests tried to bring up after the last Election in the USA: the Venezuela link, which was ridiculed by the MSM as crazy.
But the MTimes article includes the history of Smartmatic and... wtf? Venezuela, the Panama papers, a pro PNoy election official who got rich while trying to prove BBM was a criminal, Soros and the Open Society, and lots of other things that one usually only reads in conspiracy websites.
But here is the part about Venezuela:
Over two decades ago, three engineers, led by Antonio Mugica, began to develop a new election technology in Venezuela. After the controversial 2000 US election, they saw an opportunity. With funds from private investors, they incorporated in Delaware in 2000. One of the investors was Jorge Massa Dustou, Venezuela's richest man married to the sister of Gustavo Cisneros, a billionaire and Dustou's former boss. Reportedly, Cisneros bankrolled the failed 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt against Hugo Chávez....When Mugica's company got funds from the Chavez government, the US began to investigate Smartmatic's links to the Venezuelan government.
italics mine.
And so, the software contractor quickly moved its headquarters to London in 2012. ...
place stuff about London and the SGO corp here: their chief asset was the Smartmatic machine.
Malloch Brown's Philippine ties stem from the mid-1980s when the former Economist journalist became the lead international partner at the Sawyer-Miller Group, presidential hopeful Corazon Aquino's PR agency. After a poll controversy, Cory Aquino won, but tightly, and Malloch Brown formed a close relationship with the thankful family dynasty. Cooperation was re-ignited ahead of the 2010 elections, when Benigno S. Aquino 3rd became the first Philippine president whose votes were counted by Smartmatic despite persistent allegations about systemic vulnerabilities.....
in July 2015, Malloch Brown returned to the Philippines. Subsequently, Comelec's Bautista awarded Smartmatic contracts at a total of P2.6 billion in the 2016 election.
more info at the link of how they got Soros and his money machines into the plot.
Malloch Brown also joined the Soros advisors, ahead of the devastating conflict when the billionaire financed agencies cooperating with US authorities, such as Philip Goldberg — later US ambassador to the Philippines until his departure and alleged regime change plan in fall 2016, as The Manila Times reported at the time.,...When Malloch Brown stepped down as chairman of SGO in December 2020, he was made the president of Soros' Open Society Foundation. As Smartmatic's chairman, he was succeeded by Peter Vance Neffenger, a US Coast Guard admiral and President Barack Obama's head of transportation security and a member of Biden's transition team. Trained in Harvard and the US Naval War College, Neffenger was seen as the right man to protect elections worldwide (and to sell Smartmatic to skeptical Americans).
Smartmatic's origins are overshadowed by the election software contractor's odd associations and long trail of controversies, moral hazards, conflicts of interest and unexplainable fortunes in the name of "good governance."
as the MT article reminds us:
Perhaps sometimes those who speak loudest for "public interest, freedom and democracy" are but façades for private interests and oligarchies derailing the very democracy they purport to serve.
media matters is dismissing the story as a mere conspiracy theory.
Update (2/4/21): Smartmatic has reportedly filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. CNN's Oliver Darcy reports that the lawsuit accuses “Fox, Giuliani, Powell and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro of intentionally lying about Smartmatic in an effort to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen
all the US news assume the charges are baseless and ridicule them,so when you read stories that Sydney Powel and Mayor Guilliani are nutcase and that's why they are being sued by Smartmatic, just remember that Guilliani became mayor for going against the Mafia in NYC, and Trumpieboy knows where all the corrupt types hide their money.
but in contrast, the Filipino press looks at folks involved and wonders where they got all that lovely money while working for the government.
Mr Bautista call your office. There are questions they want you to answer.
Sigh.
update: in case you think I am criticizing the Philippines for corruption, I suggest you look on how the politicians in the USA got to be millionaires. Trumpieboy might have done some slick deals in business, but his business deals were an open book, not like Pelosi, Clinton, Biden and others who became millionaires on the small salary they collected in government jobs.
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