We have less than one year to go until the May 9, 2022 elections. Although the filing of certificates of candidacy has not yet taken place – much less the election campaign period – there are already reports of widespread campaigning all over the country, especially in the provinces and rural areas. Metro Manila is relatively safe from this premature campaigning due to an omnipresent media. But in other areas where prospective candidates and hopefuls for president and senator of the Duterte administration are making their bids and their presence known in order to get ahead of the opposition, definitely the 2022 campaign has already started.

From the administration side, we already know that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte and Senator Bong Go are in the running to clinch the much-coveted Duterte anointment. Whether or not this will do them any good in terms of getting more votes is really a big question, as the power of endorsement of an incumbent President – especially one who has crashed the economy and bungled the pandemic response – is definitely not automatic. The two administration frontrunners might have to be careful in that a Duterte anointment can actually be a kiss of death.

Among the two, the Manchurian Candidate – as his principal was in the 2016 elections – is clearly Senator Go. There can be no doubt about this.

After capturing Duterte and making him the leader of its first puppet government in the Philippines, China is not just yet about to let go of its stranglehold on this country, especially not during the watershed decade of its projected domination of the South China Sea and the forced capitulation of Taiwan to Beijing (or even its occupation if the former fails). With the US and its allies determined to frustrate Chinese hegemony in the region, the continuation of the Chinese puppet regime in the Philippines serves a vital role in China’s plans to tip the balance of alliances in this part of the world, with the Philippines on its side or, at the very least, neutered in order not to serve the US alliance any purpose.

A Bong Go presidency is therefore the greatest threat to Philippine sovereignty and independence when it comes to dealing with China and its creeping invasion of the Spratly Islands and the whole of the West Philippine Sea. As early as one year before the elections, let us all be clear about that. If we do not want another traitor in Malacañang, the Filipino people cannot afford to have a Bong Go presidency.

In addition, Senator Go is basically an empty husk driven by Chinese interests and moved only by marionette strings, as can be gleaned from his debates with Senator Franklin Drilon, where Go had to be coached or given notes by his staff. One would think that our Senate should at least be at par with our law schools in terms of the erudition and intelligence of those who populate it. What more Malacañang.

Sara Duterte, on the other hand, hopes to refresh, revive, and reinvent the Duterte legacy which, as of this very moment, consists of a drug war that has claimed at least 20,000 lives, a botched pandemic response, a ruined economy that is not expected to go back to pre-pandemic growth levels until the end of 2022 – or achieve hypothetical non-pandemic rates until 2025 – and a Chinese puppet government. The only way Sara can reinvent the Duterte legacy is by abandoning all her father’s policies but, ironically, while still using the same “siga ng kanto” leadership style popularized by her father and for which she is also known, after that sheriff-slapping incident in 2011 that marked her debut in the national stage as the Duterte-to-the-bones daughter of the DDS Mayor.

Unlike Bong Go, however, Mayor Sara would probably be more discerning in continuing her father’s Chinese puppet government. During her father’s reign, Sara and Davao City have been the beneficiaries of several US grants and aids, not to mention the US’s regular and personal invitations to Sara for her to attend this and that US-sponsored conference, seminar, or what-have-you, whether here in the Philippines or in the US. The US probably is not closing its doors on Sara. This is for the simple reason that it is already hopeless for the US to turn Bong Go into an ally, beholden as he is by name, looks, and politics to China. The only thing that still makes Bong Go a Filipino is his birth certificate.

Then again, in the time-tested art of US diplomacy, of course the US will also be banking on a Leni Robredo for president candidacy as soon as she officially declares for the position, something that bodes well for the US, at least insofar as its fight against Chinese expansionism is concerned. On the side of the opposition, there is no doubt what their position is on China and its nine-dash line claim. There are no ifs or buts about it. China must get out of the West Philippine Sea and leave the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. In order to achieve this, the opposition will more than welcome once again a full partnership with the US, Japan, Australia, and South Korea in defending the Western alliance’s security interests in the region.       

But even without a Leni Robredo candidacy for president, this still does not mean that the retired generals who have just recently voiced their opposition to Duterte’s pro-China policies should now all go flocking towards the Sara camp. Not at all.

The 2022 elections will not only be about Duterte’s treason and the Chinese invasion of the WPS and our territories there. It will also be about poverty, the economy, and providing opportunities to the lot of impoverished Filipinos made worse by this administration’s bungling of the pandemic response.  

Aside from being her father’s daughter, Mayor Sara has not proven anything to show that she would fare any better than her father in these areas. One only need to look at present-day Davao City, and answer the question of whether or not – despite the billions in national funds poured into the most favored city under Duterte in the past five years – it has reduced its poverty and crime rate, eradicated the virus, and has its economy back on track. If not, Sara’s is a candidacy that is just founded on another pipe dream, no different from her father’s failed 2016 promises.

This is what the 2022 elections is all about. Whether the Filipinos will continue to hold on to the Duterte legacy of failed promises, and give it another chance by voting for his anointed one, or wake up to the reality of having been fooled by a snake oil salesman who turns out to have no cure whatsoever for whatever it is that ails Philippine society – a demagogue without a vision for salvation except the enslavement of his own people by his foreign master.

It is therefore time to offer a real vision for the Philippines, one that won’t be denied as “joke lang” at the end of the president’s term. One that can be measured, is programmatic, and beyond mere rhetoric. The 2022 elections may be about that, but there is no guarantee that the people will not waste their vote again in exchange for a pair of sneakers, a cheap watch, and P3,000. More than any other election in the past, we cannot afford to let the 2022 elections descend to such levels of vote-buying once again. Not now that the stakes are so high.

But if present trends are any indication, that is how the Duterte administration candidates, as led by Bong Go and Mayor Sara, intend to reduce the 2022 elections into: a contest of smiling faces on tarpaulins plastered all over the country this early, even in the midst of a pandemic unleashed by none other than Duterte’s own incompetence, and which continues to claim hundreds of Filipino lives.

It will not only be tragic but disastrous if this is the narrative that will dominate the 2022 elections – that in their desperation, Filipinos will settle for another round of dole-outs after being bombarded by administration hopefuls with their tarpaulined faces and propaganda. That is not what the 2022 elections should be about.

Instead, these elections should be about reclaiming our sanity and dignity as a people. We must not be fooled twice into voting for the unbridled moral and political corruption of the Davao kakistocracy, which is the only real Duterte legacy. – Rappler.com

Senator Leila de Lima, a fierce Duterte critic, has been detained in a facility at the Philippine National Police headquarters for several years over what she calls trumped-up drug charges.