IF a Senate hopeful starts campaigning at least ten years before his target election year, imagine how many years a Malacañang hopeful needs to prepare. It certainly helps if the aspirant is the husband, wife, son, or daughter of a former president. Whether that former president was a dictator or dismissed as a lame duck by his or her frenemies hardly matters. What matters is that the family surname has already enjoyed decades of media mileage, with the son or daughter attracting public attention since birth.
PBBM is proof that Pinoys can easily forget a chapter of Philippine history that happened only 40 to 50 years ago—not even a century. Martial law and anti-Marcos protests in the ’70s. Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, the “Tama na, sobra na, palitan na” rallies, the 1986 People Power uprising, Marcos’s exile, and Tita Cory’s presidency in the ’80s. All that, seemingly forgotten? Selective amnesia, anyone?
In 2022, BBM managed to morph into PBBM through campaign sorties that resembled concerts. His opponent, pink-clad Leni Robredo, resembled Tita Cory—sans the yellow OOTD.
The majority of Pinas’s voting population is used to instant coffee, instant noodles, and social media, whose main attraction is instant updates. BBM’s campaign fed the young voters’ hunger for instant gratification by bombarding them with social media posts of him clad in his red campaign color. Even I liked his campaign concerts, which I watched on Facebook, while feeling sorry for Robredo’s rather ho-hum campaign.
My initial reaction upon seeing BBM’s name on the 2022 presidential ballot was a chill running down my spine. Brrr. Back in 1986, while guarding Channel 4 against his father’s military tanks during People Power, I never imagined that a Marcos could run for president again in Pinas. I thought that was it—it was all over for the Marcoses. How wrong I was. Tsk tsk. And there it was again on the ballot, this time in 2022: Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his father’s namesake.
But life must go on. Electing Marcos Junior, I suppose, is the Pinoy’s way of moving on.
People Power’s honeymoon stage ended in November 1986, barely nine months later, with the first coup plot against newly minted President Cory Aquino. Called the “God Save the Queen” plot and linked to Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and his Reform the Armed Forces Movement, it went pfft before God could, uh, save the queen.
Its supposed goal was to promote Enrile from defense minister to prime minister, thus decreasing Tita Cory’s power to that of a useless queen. In other words, it wasn’t meant to save her but to kick her out of Malacañang—much like the kicking that sent the Marcoses to Hawaii during the February 1986 People Power uprising.
Enrile was one of People Power’s knights in shining armor, along with Fidel Ramos. Both had once been among the most loyal supporters of then-President Marcos. Their defection was—hmm—let’s just say timely. My skeptical, cynical mind even wondered if Marcos himself had advised them to “defect,” just in case he lost the 1986 battle and still needed the next administration’s goodwill. Oops. I might be accused again of overthinking People Power. So let’s end this column before it attracts unsolicited advice.
