THE OCTOPUS

By Mark Lopez
(A reposting)

On the surface, we see a lot of attacks and outrageous criticisms against the president and his administration.

They are no longer constructive in nature, and they are being incessantly thrown in order to subvert the authority and mandate of this presidency.
Like an octopus, it is actually just one group with several tentacles -- it is the disgraced and dishonorable Liberal Party.

And the tentacles?
1. The OVP
2. The Catholic Church
3. The Academe & Catholic Schools
4. The Oligarchs
5. The Elite & Social Climbers
6. The Sleepers/Saboteurs/Rogues inside the Govt
7. Mainstream Media
8. The Drug/Vice syndicates

As we have been experiencing in the past year of the Duterte presidency, these tentacles have been assiduous in their respective assignments to bring down the duly elected commander-in-chief.

They are very powerful. They are well-funded. Huge Resources. Unlimited and even coming from our own tax money and donations. They are well-organized. They are well-orchestrated, systematic, calculating and cunning.

They can turn a sinner into a saint. They can convert a criminal into a martyr of political persecution. Like that Senator in jail.

They can influence the youth, the laborers, migrant workers, the daily wage earners and the poor to rally behind them. They can even use other forces like militants or rebels to join them surreptitiously to their cause.

They will all try to paint a negative scenario, and they will combine all their resources to put the darkest of clouds over our brightening horizon, again to bring down the man in Malacañang to his knees, and bow before them.

The worst part in their tactics is pitting us Filipinos against one another, and even committing the worst possible crimes you can imagine just to prove their point. Like murdering teenagers.

Every attack, whether in the form of a organizing a new movement, a pastoral letter, a press con, a slanted news publication, mass action or rally, embarrassing international exposure and condemnation, and social media trolling, are all so well-coordinated and so precisely schemed to ironically confuse, deceive, scare and divide us.

They are into these because :
A. They want to regain power.
B. They want to avoid prosecution and accountability for their betrayal of public trust
C. They want to perpetuate their kind of governance that keeps us dumb and dumber.
D. They want to monopolize their hold on the economic, social and political fronts.

At the outset, we manifested our collective rage, anger, bitterness, disappointment and dissatisfaction of how we were governed in the last 5 decade, even as they underestimated and disregarded this communal power of ours.

But we wielded that power last May 2016.

We catapulted a maverick mayor to lead us, and that served also as our protest and our complete rejection of the "decent" "straight path" status quo that failed miserably to enhance our country and our quality of life.

It is therefore necessary that we Filipinos, regardless of station or standing, reflect deeply into these, develop the understanding, carefully observe, be discerning, and realize how we are being played and manipulated.

I cannot overemphasize my belief that even as we are now mired in a great divide and chasm, most of us, whether you are pro or anti, have one aspiration-- the betterment of our Motherland.

And I maintain that we cannot trust and be confident to those who have been in power for so long, only to promote their own selfish interests.

They have been given the opportunity to serve and uphold our welfare. But just take a look into our countryside, and you can see with your bare eyes what a mess they did.
We have given the rein to Rodrigo Roa Duterte. And he is working. He is doing his job. And he has accomplished far more in one year what the previous occupant and his mother did in a combined 12 years.

At this point, the pathetic attempts at destabilization by the puny, cowardly and deliberately absurd "opposition," should galvanize and unite us all to fully defend our republic.

The idiocy and lameness in their cause is that they think this only about Duterte.
They are hugely mistaken.

#ForTheMotherland