Kababayan: The power is in our hands! Defeat Marcos-Duterte! Reject a stolen election!
With only 25 days until the Philippine elections, the task of the Filipino people to solidify our movement and defeat Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte grows all the more urgent. The last two months of campaigning have shown us that Marcos-Duterte have no respect for the people: they have refused to attend any presidential and vice presidential debates and have offered no substantive platform to address the critical challenges faced by the country, including pandemic response, national sovereignty, economic development, and defense of human rights. But the last two months have also shown us that the Filipino people are mobilizing for change in the millions as a direct response to the threat of a Marcos-Duterte win. The hundreds of thousands mobilizing in grand rallies for Leni Robredo, Kiko Pangilinan, and the full opposition slate are proof enough of this.
The Marcos-Duterte campaign is built on lies and political repression. Disinformation has spread widely on social media, from the infamous sibuyas photoshop edits that faked the size of Marcos-Duterte rallies, to fake and illegal overseas voting exit poll reports that mislead people to believe that overseas voters favor Marcos.
Even before the official campaigning period, the Marcos and Duterte dynasties were hard at work to rig the election in their favor. President Duterte appointed all current members of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), and the company contracted to transport vote-counting machines was chaired by none other than Dennis Uy, one of President Duterte’s largest campaign donors in 2016. Meanwhile, the Marcos dynasty has waged a decades-long campaign of historical revisionism to erase the atrocities committed under Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law. This campaign, supported by the Dutertes, has been funded by the billions of pesos in ill-gotten wealth stolen from the Filipino people by the Marcoses.
But the power and wealth of the Marcos and Duterte dynasties have only pushed us to organize and fight harder for change. Anakbayan members have been alongside the masses, engaging in voter outreach and mobilization, building bridges across the political spectrum to ensure the opposition comes out victorious, holding the consulates and embassy accountable for their failures in ensuring a clean and honest election, campaigning for progressive candidates—like Neri Colmenares, Elmer Labog, and the nominees of Bayan Muna—who will bring the people’s issues to Congress, and fighting for those issues outside of Congress in the parliament of the streets.
To all our kababayan: real power is forged by our unity against those who exploit and oppress us. We exercised this power during EDSA I and EDSA II. Let us use our power to do all we can to defeat the Marcos-Duterte tandem in this last month before elections. We call on all Filipinos to mobilize en masse on May 9 in front of Philippine Consulates and other sites important to our community to showcase our vigilance until the election results are released. And if Marcos and Duterte steal the election, we must transform these mobilizations into mass protests in the streets to reject their victory. The future of the Philippines is in our hands, not those of the enemy. Let us remember our power in this election and in the fight beyond.
#NoToMarcosDuterte #NeverAgain #DefeatMarcosDuterte #JoinAnakbayan
