Massive political rallies of Robredo-Pangilinan tandem ought to serve as warning against cheating by Duterte

The opposition and the broad masses of the people have been effective in winning votes by condemning the Marcos and Duterte dynasties as “magnanakaw” (thieves) and “berdugo” (butchers) and calling for patriotic and honest governance. The Marcos and Duterte slate has utterly failed to evade the issues by making empty calls for “unity” without any clear platform or program.

Most important of all, the massive political rallies held by the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem nationwide in vote-rich cities and provincial capitals and culminating in the May 7 miting de abance in Ayala, Makati City have exposed the fakery of the poll surveys paid by the Marcos-Duterte tandem and should serve as a serious warning against cheating by the Duterte regime in the May 9 polls.

Nevertheless, according to reliable sources, the incumbent president Rodrigo R. Duterte has become even more hell-bent on rigging the elections in order to preclude his prosecution and trial for crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court as well as for plunder and multiple murders before Philippine courts.

The basic scheme for rigging the 2022 elections involves the pre-shading of ballots in favor of the Marcos-Duterte tandem and slate of candidates, with cash incentives provided to the voters. The pre-shaded ballots are then fed to the Smartmatic vote counting machines. It is a scheme of GIGO (garbage in and garbage out), with Smartmatic pretending to be ignorant of the data breach.

To carry out the scheme, Duterte has complete control of the Comelec and all its personnel, the teachers deputized for electoral duty and the military and police assigned to secure the electoral precincts, personnel and paraphernalia. Pro-Marcos and pro-Duterte local officials are mobilized to ensure that the pre-shaded ballots and cash incentives are handed to the voters.

The propaganda that Marcos Junior is extremely “popular” and is on the way to electoral victory by a big margin of 30 per cent over Robredo is calculated to facilitate the rigging of the 2022 elections by Rodrigo Duterte and to preempt gigantic mass protests and is not intended to rouse the people to support Robredo as the underdog gaining the momentum to beat the overrated junior of his widely hated fascist and corrupt father.

There are yet no indications that the US is telling its puppet Duterte to back out of his scheme to rig the elections. Known assets of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency have not yet received orders to discourage Duterte from cheating. But military and police officers loyal to the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem are hopeful that the broad masses of the people would rise up like in 1986 as soon as the vote count would indicate fraud.

As in the presidential election of 1986, when the fascist dictators Marcos cheated, a broad range of of people belonging to patriotic and democratic forces and institutions are prepared to engage in gigantic mass actions in order to frustrate the electoral fraud. Even if there shall be massive cheating in the 2022 elections, the voters still need to go the polls to gain the moral authority to be outraged and engage in mass uprisings and even go all the way to wage revolution.

Among those expected to rise up in the millions in Metro Manila and nationwide are the opposition parties, the Christian parishes and Muslim communities, the patriotic and progressive mass organizations and the broad masses of people who have long been oppressed and exploited by political dynasties and by the reactionary classes of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.###

Massive political rallies of Robredo-Pangilinan tandem ought to serve as warning against cheating by Duterte