2 weeks Ago By Dean de la Paz
A significant portion of the public’s righteous indignation arrayed against the Vice President stems from the manner her family, both her father and brothers, had compromised law and order, civilized behavior, decency and treated the public in general. Never mind that barring a cataclysmic political extinction of biblical proportions, the Duterte family may never again be elected to such powerful national positions they enjoyed. Unfortunately, the hatred that rightfully welled-up against them, both petty and deep-seated, has crossed over to other arenas and ironically, the propensity to create the same kind of dynasties as the Dutertes remains.
One involves the question of empowering and perpetuating political families and the apparent kingdoms of kowtowing subjects and subservient sycophants — either created or artificially simulated — to legitimize their autocracy. As a business school post-graduate student in the eighties, we were fortunate to have been mentored by some of the best marketing professionals in the field. As part-time professors and full-time professionals, they immersed us deeply in their professional product marketing initiatives and from their live-wire duality as both teachers and practitioners, we benefitted not just from the wisdom brought inside the four antiseptic walls of our case rooms but also from the actual interplay of theory and direct first-hand field experiences of their careers.
In these classes, we crossed the great divide from theory to practice and from academics to the gritty down and dirty trenches of cut-throat competitive marketing. In several instances, as they took us to both urban and rural arenas, our contributions were particularly relevant when the product being marketed crossed demographic classes much like soda pop and soap products. And, as we will soon realize, these impact on the marketing of elected lawmakers and leaders.
Part of the most important lessons involved crisis management, an aspect critical when a product like a fizzless soda, a sudsless soap or a clueless politician has inherent weaknesses, defects, or flaws. The lessons were especially relevant where a product that should be sold at fire sale prices eventually becomes so expensive a commodity that we are destined to spend more, and probably waste billions on its next generation political pedigree. As its exponentially increasing costs are amortized for at least three years, perhaps even more, we realize that as we now enter this aberrant campaign period for the 2025 midterm elections, the phenomenon of a deceptively cheap political product whose hidden costs rise over time suddenly becomes relevant.
One class activity was the product launch and the accompanying bells and whistles fanfare particularly resonant in the rural areas where media-predisposed communities in the sticks seemed more enthused and any hype and ballyhoo expectedly more effective and pronounced. In the remote rural areas, when several classes of students are imported to a product launch, as crowds are simulated and the apparent desired popularity contrived, bandwagon-effects are expected. CROWD.
A crowd of Leni supporters aka ‘Kakampinks,’ as seen in this still from ‘And So It Begins.’ Courtesy of Ramona Diaz Remember the 200,000 to over 700,000-strong crowds attracted to the presidential campaign that challenged the resurrection of the Marcoses in 2022? In many instances, the volunteer crowds joined at least several rallies and were double and triple-counted and contributed to the cumulative total. Rally sizes are not harbingers of a mandate.
Presuming regularity, ironically, when compared to the official numbers eventually comprising a presidential mandate as counted by the state elections commission, however optically larger, those campaign rally crowds hardly mattered. Simulating popularity in the initial stages of a campaign, however, has its uses. When launching campaigns, such gimmickry works particularly well in highly competitive environments regardless of the absence of a product’s distinctive merit.
Soap peddlers can simulate demand by attracting and creating crowds of curious outsiders and starstruck fans. The optics can be deceptive when comparative crowd sizes warp into measures of competitive advantages regardless of merit. As expected, the genus politicians and their public relations power brokers do the same for themselves or for their sudsless, fizz-less political principals.
Aberrant dichotomy In the context of building a powerful political juggernaut for the 2028 presidential elections, the predicate 2025 midterms serve as an illustrative example of this strategy of creating, or simulating crowds to overwhelm the absence of merit. Simply analyze the composition of the current Senate and the “dream (or nightmare) senatorial ticket” wrangled together under the Marcos administration’s guidon. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that substantive qualities, experience, competence, merit, intellect, principles and even patriotism — those theoretically expected of true leaders — remain a rarity however popular incumbents and candidates are.
The aberrant dichotomy and its deeply insulting message to a serious voter is especially pronounced where political dynasties enter the equation, further waylaying merit as a requisite quality for lawmaking. Analyze the Marcos senatorial ticket. Despite the public’s growing disdain for dynasties as catalyzed by the anti-Duterte frenzy, the empires of power-hungry political families are striking back.
TICKET. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. endorses 12 senatorial aspirants during the Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas convention in Pasay City on September 26, 2024.
While the Marcos ticket may seem to be blindly, albeit weakly pandering to the crowd, whether real, simulated or contrived, the game plan is to dominate the legislature with a few political families. Given today’s headlines and the sick and nauseating effect of existing political dynasties infesting our highest elective offices, the rot behind the woodwork compels the increasingly fewer decent men to review constitutional provisions tackling the apparently continuous proliferation of political families and the wealth, power and popularity they carry as they run under the Marcos brand of governance. Curiously, one rebranded from the cancer-stricken and disbanded Uniteam and now known as the “Alliance for the New Philippines.
” It is hard to ignore the aggressive drive by the Marcos administration to compel on the electorate its version of a toxic alchemy of classic cronyism and political dynasties and empires, all allegedly substantiated by simulated crowds and meritless popularity factors. With such a line-up of dynasties, we have just been insulted. But the people will vote for them anyway.
– Rappler.com Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker and managing director of a New Jersey-based power company operating in the Philippines. He is the chairman of the board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance, and Mathematics professor.
He collects Godzilla figures and antique tin robots. Meet the ‘obese’ political dynasties of the Philippines.
