After months of deliberation, current Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo finally filed her certificate of candidacy to run for President in the 2022 Presidential elections. She has been hesitant to run because she didn’t want several candidates to go up against President Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential bet. She didn’t want the Opposition vote to be spread across several candidates. She wanted a single Opposition candidate essential to beating a popular incumbent camp. The problem is, Robredo wanted other Presidential candidates like Senators Manny Pacquiao and Ping Lacson and Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno to give way to her. She wanted to be the sole representative of the Opposition. Needless to say, none of them obliged. Why should they? They have their own ambitions and they know she is a lame duck.
Robredo also launched her new brand during her filing for candidacy. She ditched the traditional yellow motif of her camp and sported a pink mask and had a pink ribbon pinned to her chest. We can’t help but ask, what the heck happened to Robredo? Did she abandon the Liberal Party? Or, rather, did the Liberal party stop supporting her bid for the Presidency? More importantly, is there still a Liberal party? Why is Robredo now wearing pink when she was a loud and proud Yellow? By ditching the yellow color, Robredo inadvertently admitted that the yellow colour, which is very much associated with the Liberal Party, heralds the losing team.
Robredo has, indeed, filed for her certificate of candidacy as an independent. As far as I know, Robredo hasn’t formally announced that she has left the Liberal Party. As far as I know Robredo is still the leader of the Opposition and continues to be chairman of the Liberal Party. It is quite baffling why she has pulled yet another stunt and switched to the color pink. This is not a good sign at all. What it shows is Robredo’s lack of consistency and conviction.
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What does pink stand for to Robredo anyway? The Cancer Council use the pink ribbon campaign to raise awareness about breast and gynaecological cancers, as well as raise funds for prevention programs. As usual, Team Robredo’s lack of originality is on display yet again. At least the yellow ribbon meant something to the Aquinos, something about Ninoy tying a yellow ribbon for Cory and all that crap.
This is not the first time Robredo and her Liberal party mates changed colors. They switched to a white motif during the 2019 mid-term elections after the Liberal Party lost control. That obviously didn’t help their campaign either because all their senatorial bets including former Senator Bam Aquino and former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas lost. The constant rebranding and switching colors to “symbolize” what they stand for only means they don’t stand for anything. They try to fool the public with imagery gimmicks but they are only fooling themselves.
A Robredo supporter even mocked her critics saying that it will be hard to criticize her as Dilawan or yellow because she is now wearing pink. That’s silly because Robredo wearing pink doesn’t change what she is. The yellow brand is forever etched in people’s minds because that’s what she and the Liberal Party used to sell hard to the public.
Robredo and her supporters are glossing over the fact that the Liberal Party is dead. How can people trust her and her team to lead a country when they can’t even form a coalition or forge an alliance with other Presidential candidates? The fact that Robredo couldn’t command an audience with any of the other Presidential candidates (yes, they snubbed her) means her envirioned administration (God forbid!) will be nothing short of a disaster. Robredo will not get respect from the military and police forces — agencies that are led mostly by men. After all, the Philippines is still a boy’s club and there is no way Robredo will be welcome in that club since she behaves like a tweetums — a woman putting forth a meek and weak persona with manipulative intent. In other words, Robredo doesn’t come across as someone strong, which is not good for a country of over 100 million people.
Robredo said that she decided to run for the Presidency in a bid to “stop the Marcoses from returning to power and to prevent another brand of governance similar to President Rodrigo Duterte.” She probably thinks she can win against former Senator Bongbong Marcos. That’s a bit too naïve of her considering she won’t be running with the help of the Liberal Party machinery the same way she did during the 2016 Presidential Elections when the Liberal Party still had control over the country’s coffers and had allies in every agency including the Commission on Elections. We all know that former COMELEC Chairman Andy Bautista is now on the run from the law and is in no position to help her “win”. Besides, with Pacquiao, Lacson, and Moreno running for the presidency and each one of them being more popular than her, she’s got very low chance of success. Last I heard, Marcos still enjoys a solid base of supporters.
I suppose with Robredo running for the 2022 Presidency, we will know once and for all if she really did win the Vice Presidency in 2016. There had since been only one way to find out if she really did get 14 million votes in that election since the electoral tribunal did not provide any closure to Marcos’s election protests claiming Robredo’s win was fraudulent. Marcos now running for the presidency against Robredo opens up that way to find out once and for all. Polls conducted by reputable over the last several years told of how Marcos sustained his voter base while Robredo evidently never had one up to scratch to begin with. The 2019 elections in which all eight candidates endorsed by Robredo lost told the same story. This coming election in May 2022 will tell us the same story.
In life, things are not always what they seem.
Leni Robredo’s bid for the presidency is doomed because of her hypocrisy and lame platform
Source: Filipino News Bulletin
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