Ben Lim engages in an analysis of why FPJ is, to his mind, a surer and surer thing:
“Yet there is some poetic justice in all this. The voters refused to follow the script because his opponents turned FPJ into the official underdog by all their shootings. All the attempts to disqualify and eliminate him raised memories and resentment of the D and E groups on what the entrenched elite did to former President Estrada, and there seemed every reason to believe that these attacks were just the beginning. FPJ’s tormentors would soon move heaven and earth to remove him from the presidential race. Indeed it can be heard over the radio feedback texts from opponents of FPJ that two years was too long for Estrada and they would make sure that if FPJ wins, they won’t allow him to last more than a year.”
Tactically, the direct attack doesn’t work. It didn’t work against Magsaysay, it didn’t work against Marcos in ’65, it didn’t work against Aquino in 87, and it failed against Estrada in 92.
Only exposing the contradictions between a candidate’s views and platforms and what is being done by his people has a chance of working.
The present administration campaign is suffering from many of the same flaws and mistaken tactics that resulted in the Macapagal defeat of 1965, and not because of themselves, but instead, I’m convinced, because many of the same people behind FPJ today were part of the Marcos victory in 1965. This is as much a historical grudge match as it is a contemporary political contest, except the president hardly has any of the veterans of 65 on her side, and all too many of the veterans (accomplices?) of the Marcos victories of ’65 an ’69 are in the FPJ camp.
