The return of Edwin Lacierda and US dependence

Social media observers say there has been a significant rise in the number of rants in the internet against President Duterte during and after his visit to the People’s Republic of China.

Some of them wondered whether or not this was the start of a decline in the pop­ularity of the Chief Executive. Surveys showed, however, that the President remains the most popular and most trusted lead­er in the country even with his apparent strongly pro-China stance.

What appears to be an intensification of anti-Duterte social media rants seems to in­dicate two things.

First, that the ranters are mostly anti-Duterte elements who had always been against him since the days of the cam­paign leading up to the 2016 elections.

Second, that the ranters are either die-hard pro-Amer­icans or are merely trying to piggyback on what they thought would be a strong an­ti-China sentiment among Fil­ipinos that can snowball into an anti-Duterte mood.

There seems to be some bases for these two.

Among the most promi­nent social media anti-Duterte ranters, for example, is former President Noynoy Aquino’s spokesman, Edwin Lacierda. Lacierda appears to have got­ten out from what was sup­posed to be a self-imposed hi­bernation.

He is now locked in a social media tit-for-tat with pro-Duterte blogger, erstwhile singing band lead vocalist and self-anointed political analyst Mocha Uson.

Lacierda’s most re­cent Facebook posts have been against the President’s pro-China actions and pro­nouncement.

In one post, Lacierda warned that, “it is not the US or Mr. Obama going to hell, it is this country going to hell and asking ourselves how fast his (President Duterte’s) glib tongue will bring us to ruin.”

In another post, Lacier­da chided the President and his men. He said, “President Duterte went to China, ob­tained significant loan conces­sions, broke off with the United States and in return, he and his Cabinet ministers embraced a new religion—CONFUSION­ISM.”

Lacierda also tried his hands at humor and once post­ed this: “Someone quipped that with the United States, we Filipinos have colonial mental­ity. With this irrational anti-US pivot to China, we are now a mental colony!”

Lacierda’s remarks—and those who share his political persuasion—are understand­able. After all, Lacierda was a major player in the failed cam­paign that saw his principal, Mar Roxas, badly beaten in an election contest they thought they could handily win.

He was also the “face” of the administration whose President said the 2016 elec­tions was a referendum on his leadership. They, too, lost that “referendum” – in an embar­rassing way.

It is also understand­able that Lacierda is seriously worried about the apparent pro-China stance of the cur­rent President. After all, Lac­ierda’s principal, Mar Roxas, is the grandson of the champion of pro-Americanism in Philip­pine politics: the late President Manuel Roxas.

It was President Roxas (Manuel, not Mar), who hailed the Americans in his own in­augural speech. There, the late President Roxas said:

“We are to be a free nation largely because we were aided in that direction by the love of liberty and the goodwill of the American people. If we suc­ceed as a nation, if we are able to survive as a nation—and, of course, we will—we will have America to thank.”

Thanks to the late Pres­ident, we were ushered into an era when Filipinos cannot imagine a present and a future without America.

The exception appears to be President Duterte. He can imagine one without America. That ability appears to have driven Lacierda and his Face­book followers into the abyss of incurable anxiety.

It is interesting that the late President Roxas went out of his way to criticize those harboring anti-American sentiments in his own inau­gural speech. He said:

“Yet, we have today in our own land a few among us who would have us be­lieve that we are in danger of an imperialistic invasion from the very nation which is granting us our sovereignty. They would have us believe that the American Repub­lic, resplendent in her power and prestige as the leader of democracy and as the spokes­man for freedom, would lend herself to a theft of our na­tional heritage for the sake of a thimbleful of profits.’

Those words must have been music to the ears of America’s overseers in her Pacific empire. Those words must have also been so full of power that they continue to define the sentiments of some, particularly those who served under the Aquino-Roxas re­gime which lost in the recent elections-cum-referendum.

President Duterte’s pro-China drift could have dire consequences. It may be true that it would be a big mistake—fatal even—to dis­please the “champion of free­dom and democracy” hailed by the grandfather of Lacier­da’s political principal.

Yes, there could be “hell to pay.”

In the meantime, we shall be content just watching Lac­ierda give Mocha Uson his version of social media hell.