Recently, I asked a few of my friends who were passionately defending the presidential bid of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as to why they were voting for him.

The general answer was a sincere one, and, if I may add, a critical one: they were sick and tired of the country’s rotten political system over the last 30+ years, after the EDSA People Power revolt of 1986.

Nothing has really changed, one of them told me – the poor were still poor, the rich were still in power, and corruption, among other things, was still very much part of government.

Another said: we’ve been fighting against the Marcos family for years, but it has not accordingly, in any way, improved the living conditions of the general public.

One of them, a person trained to become a steward of God’s mercy, even pointed out to me that Christian values demand an unconditional forgiveness of all the sins committed by the Marcoses. Doing so and moving on, she said, would be an impetus for national reconciliation and healing.

In an attempt to convince them to abandon their support by stating the fact that the late dictator and his wife have looted billions of pesos from public funds, and that their family – including Marcos Jr. – still likely benefits from these funds, I am confronted by a statement I honestly find hard to disagree with: all politicians are corrupt anyway.

Look, these concerns are valid.

Generally, I agree that no matter how much we enjoy the post-dictatorship “democratic space,” especially under the administration of the late President Noynoy Aquino, this does not necessarily translate into actual economic benefits for most Filipinos.

Many of our people, especially outside the Twitter world where the Marcoses are heavily unpopular, still struggle in overcrowded urban centers and the rural countryside. They can barely afford good education, do not have job security, and, especially now during the pandemic, cannot access health services.

This, I believe, are the realities and public frustrations penetrated by Marcos’ well-funded and, yes, effective propaganda machine.

How? By presenting the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s infrastructure legacy, his “Bagong Lipunan,” as so-called proof that the Philippines was a utopia of sorts back during Martial Law.

Add to that the testimonies of our lolos and lolas who claimed that life was more peaceful and orderly then.

For us who call Marcos Sr. a dictator and see his junior’s rise to power as a national political threat, this meeting of public sentiments and Marcosian propaganda is a reality that we have to reckon and engage with.

Now, I am sure that most of us can intellectually debunk these claims with all of our facts and figures, court rulings, and reports of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations.

But so what?

This brings us to the utter failure of the People Power revolt.

The values that rallied people to say, “Tama na, sobra na, palitan na,” have been betrayed by the incompetence and corruption of current politicians. Some even lurk in the leading anti-Marcos movement, whose figurehead is Vice President Robredo. These people make the public doubt the credibility of the yellow-turned-pink opposition leader, as recent poll surveys suggest.

This unfortunate reality enabled the Marcoses to loot popularity anew.

So what now?

It is an imperative for us who are committed to defending democracy to be tireless in engaging our friends who are sincere in their convictions for genuine political and economic change, but are, so far, on the side of Marcos Jr.

After all, apart from the personalities involved, and no matter what our political preferences are, we generally share common aspirations: a credible government that will serve the interests of the people, and genuine and tangible economic progress especially at the grassroots level.

More than just preventing the possibility of having a second Ferdinand Marcos as a president – which is frankly a humiliating, moral regression – the real challenge for opposition politicians, especially Vice President Robredo, is to convince people of good will not to compromise their democratic values for strongman politics. – Rappler.com

Ted Tuvera earned his journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas. He covered a major beat for a national daily for three years. Currently, he is a seminarian in the Archdiocese of Capiz.