Butch Bagabuyo “There are no victories at bargain prices.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower PRESUMPTIVE President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s term has not yet begun. But despite the landslide victory of tough-talking Davao mayor, the ruling elite, with the use of their infamous mercenaries in mainstream media, are talking of alleged destabilization plots as a consequence of the alleged not well-thought-out appointments by “Super Digong.” Adlai Stevenson once said in a speech that Americans pick on a president and for four years they pick on him. How true! There is nothing wrong with it. In a democratic space, opposition is a must. But the problem lies in the fact that those who pick on our President are the few who are rich, the ruling elite, a.k.a. Imperial Manila. This early, they are now picking on our newly elected president from our very own Mindanao. The reason is simple: the ruling elite has all the money there is in our country even as they own and manage mainstream media. What compounds the problem of the poor in our country is that the noisy ones become mercenaries and because they are one of us, they easily drown the uncoordinated pleas of the greatest majority. In my watering hole, outspoken media personalities lectured us: “Long before Digong threw his hat for the presidency, you were at the forefront preaching federalism and the urgent need to have a president from Mindanao. But now that your dream, which was also ours for the longest time, has come, you are left out while all the opportunists are now in Davao savoring the juiciest of positions. So what now?” Undoubtedly, governance is not about economics and what the economists call the GDPs – Gross Domestic Products - but service first and last. We do not have to compete with other nations as far as economic growth is concerned just like today when our government claims to have made economic miracles in the region or even the world. But many of our people are starving to death and those who go to the streets to beg for food are brutally gunned down. Let me repeat: unless, we, the 90 million poor Filipinos, continue to unite and hire buses/jeepneys with our hard-earned pesos and troop to Davao City on June 12, Independence Day, we will lose our newly achieved independence from Imperial Manila. Sadly, what is happening is definitely not the kind of change we’ve all been dreaming of and fought for but a nauseating repeat of debilitating greed. Believe you me, right now Imperial Manila is building impregnable structures to shield our man, Rodrigo “Super Digong” Duterte, from ourselves, the small people to whom he dedicated his life. As we ask, why can’t the cabinet be like our own presumptive president Digong--poor and used to be unknown but with oozing love for the millions who are poor? Enough is enough! In the meantime, we, the small-time but die-hard members of the PDP-Laban should continue to fight with all we’ve got the insidious and creeping attempt by big business in Imperial Manila to make a repeat of the 1986 fiasco. As I keep repeating: with God on our side, we can make miracles after miracles happen as what we’ve just done in the contest for the presidency. Right now, unless we choose to be radical and bury the past that led us to this sorry state of governance, presumptive president Rodrigo Roa Duterte shall fail us even before the start of his term. Here is my take:
  • Let us start a determined campaign to have an exclusive bus/jeepney caravan of the poor in Mindanao--every 200 poor individuals contribute five pesos each and choose one from among themselves either by raffle or whatever to lead the jeepney hired at a much discounted rate from all points in our paradise-like islands of Mindanao-Basilan-Sulu-Palawan-Tawi-tawi and, God willing, converge at the freedom park in Davao City for the Independence day celebration this June 12.
  • The reason why one should be chosen from among the group of 200 poor individuals who have contributed five pesos each is because the travel expense in going to and from Davao City is estimated to be one thousand pesos more or less. Hence, the computation should be based on the estimated travel expenses from one’s place to Davao and back.
  • All the names of the poor donors should be reflected on the list and signed by them individually. The list should also incorporate the Federalism Manifesto with a plea to have Sen. Koko Pimentel III as Senate president, which is but logical, PDP-Laban, being the largest and most potent political party in the country today. In fact, it was only in Mindanao where Cayetano won big.
  • Every participating bus/jeepney must be headed by a non-politician Mindanaoan, and the names of the head of every bus/jeepney as well as the participating members in that same bus/jeepney should for be submitted for posterity not later than June 6 to the Cagayan de Oro council of the PDP-Laban, care of Gangging Pimentel, Jobags Bagabuyo or Welvert Cuenca at VIP Hotel, Cagayan de Oro or by e-mail to bagabuyos@yahoo.com or by phone or text to me (Atty. Rogelio “Butch” Bagabuyo, tel. nos. 0918-803-0197, 0928-434-5041) and/or to our Facebook or Tweeter accounts PDP-Laban which started the other day.
  • No bus/jeepney should travel faster than 60 kilometers per hour, and to ensure absolute compliance to this unique rule, only the participating bus/jeepney that submits to the coordinator the exact time of departure from the originating place as well as the exact time of arrival at the designated area with the names of the driver, the conductor, the leader and the members thereof shall be considered as part of the bus/jeepney caravan.
  • Every participating member should provide himself with his own provision plus one other. This, hopefully, is going to be the precursor of New Order) with enough paper bags to ensure the area be cleaned after the event.
This kind of discipline will prove to one and all that the real strength lies not in wealth and machinery but in well-disciplined warm bodies. Believe you me, this is the kind of power that prevented and sent chilling, if not freezing, effects to the illegal operators of the Smartmatic’s counting machines--clearly designed digital “dagdag-bawas” machines known as VCM (vicious count for Mar), formerly the OMR (Oplan Mar Roxas), all indicating cheating in favor of the Liberal Party standard bearer against our presidential choice in the May 9 presidential elections. But how come the VCM counted only 16 million votes, more or less, for Super Digong when my estimate is no less than 22 million overwhelmingly voted for Duterte? And why did the so-called cosmetic change actually alter the vote count? Trust me, the big business a.k.a. Imperial Manila, the very few ruling elite and the trapos of the filthy rich, will, without fail, put up all the roadblocks one after the other but, we, the 90 million poor Filipinos are all willing and able to take the “bitter pill” for our Super Digong and Koko Pimentel because we are confident they both know the best of the thousand and one ways of skinning a cat that is Imperial Manila. Gets mo? Duterte-Pimentel pa more! Tsada, di ba?