The hysteria surrounding the Rappler-COMELEC partnership is out of control. Both columnist Rigoberto Tiglao and Solicitor General Jose Calida claim that with this partnership the USA will effectively rig the election for Robredo. Now Mario Ferdinand Paison claims that Rappler will lead the Philippines to war.
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| https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/03/06/opinion/columns/is-rappler-inciting-another-ukraine-in-the-philippines/1835221 |
Mario Ferdinand Paison is the director of Phil-BRICS Strategic Studies which describes itself thusly:
The PHILIPPINE – BRICS STRATEGIC STUDIES (Phil-BRICS) is a registered non-profit organization dedicated to promoting global multi-polarity and Philippine leadership in global peace and prosperity advocacy.Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are important new global actors that the Philippines must learn to deal with. They are both collaborators and competitors to the traditional center economies of the United States and Europe. They offer both possibilities and perils for the Philippines should its leadership opt to pursue strategic development and an independent foreign policy. This will be most challenging when it comes to China, the leading BRICS country.
It would seem that whatever this group does they should have a basic understanding of the intricacies of geopolitics. Let's take a look at this article and see if that is the case.
WE may well be headed for war in the Philippines. The Philippines is letting inciters of revolutions into the heart of our election process. Why are we letting Rappler, which receives some $150,000 a year from the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, the known funder of antigovernment protest groups, including violent rioters, in the Arab and Ukraine revolutions and Hong Kong protests, the financial arm of the CIA as admitted by the former head of NED, Alan Weinsten, himself, be the official media partner of the Commission on Elections (Comelec)? During the height of the Hong Kong protests, Dr. Michael Pillsbury of Hudson Institute admitted that the NED also funded "millions of dollars of programs" in Hong Kong. Sen. Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan had glorified the rioters as freedom fighters yet did not report on the rioters receiving foreign funding and training. Why should the US be allowed to be the official observer in our elections?
How do they incite revolutions? Aside from funding, training and organizing parties, western and NED-supported media will block almost all news unfavorable to the US and its allies, and will magnify criticisms of non-allies and create anger, hatred and ridicule. Examples?
Right off the bat Mario claims that because Rappler receives NED grants that means the US will be admitted "into the heart of our election process." He then asks, "Why should the US be allowed to be the official observer in our elections?" How is the US an official observer in the Philippine elections? He gives absolutely no proof for this claim and merely assumes it because Rappler receives NED grants. Does Mario not know that many other organizations in the Philippines receive NED grants and that they receive much more money than Rappler?
The elected Ukraine government was overthrown with US support, including with US white supremacist-supported neo-Nazis, such as the Azov Battalion attacking and burning people and government buildings, using swastikas and similar symbols, marching with torches evenings in 2014, and honoring as hero Stepan Bandera, who had collaborated with the Germans including in the ethnic cleansing of the Poles and Jews.
The Ukraine war was warned against already years ago by Kissinger, historians and diplomats, building up for over a decade due to acts from the West's five waves of NATO aggression. The US and NATO promised not to recruit and arm the European countries but entered over a dozen countries to the very border of Russia and refused to sign an agreement not to arm Ukraine against Russia, refusing to even put it on the agenda.
These two paragraphs correctly explains what has been happening in Ukraine for the past 30 years and why Russia has decided to invade. The US wanted Ukraine in NATO and Russia did not want NATO on his border. This war was a long time coming and can be directly traced to US meddling. How does that situation remotely relate to the Philippines? The only likely candidate to invade the Philippines would be China as they continue to encroach on Philippine territory in the WPS.
Russia and China immediately sent emergency weapons and bullets for our soldiers in the Marawi Crisis, when President Duterte requested for assistance after the US and Europe initially blocked much-needed arms delivery.
What an incredible lie that is. DND Secretary Lorenzana can clear that up for Mario.
The US was assisting from the beginning. Not to mention the US has been giving military assistance to the Philippines since 1898.
Another threat to our elections, US-funded Rappler, with a record of biased news or selective reporting and foreign support in millions of dollars, being given an official role in the National Elections by the Comelec, should be unacceptable to any self-respecting country or even to an organization with any integrity.
Earlier in this piece Mario said Rappler gets $150,000 per year from the NED. Surely Rappler's expenses are more that $150,000. Yet Mario insists that Rappler is US-funded. Does he not know that both the PCOO and the Philippine News Agency are partnered with and receive assistance from China?
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1064816 |
The Chinese Embassy is set to donate an additional PHP15 million worth of information technology equipment to the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) to help improve its services.
PCOO Secretary Martin Andanar bared this noting that his agency expects to receive the amount sometime in May or June.
This amount comes on top of the PHP140 million worth of radio and broadcasting equipment the Chinese Embassy previously donated to the agency.
Last month, Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua also led the turn-over ceremony of computers, camcorders, teleprompters to state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA) and Radyo Pilipinas of the Philippine Broadcasting Service (PBS).
Why are former associate justice Antonio Carpio, former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario, UP professor Jay Batongbacal, DLSU professor Renato de Castro, et al. quiet on direct US meddling in our elections but raise a howl on unproven, "possibilities" of a "Manchurian Candidate"? Why have Rappler, Inquirer and ABS-CBS not reported on the US embassy lobbying in Comelec to have an official poll watchers role in our elections — when the US involved itself in Egyptian, Venezuelan, Iraqi, Ukrainian and other elections; when these nations saw coups, color revolutions, "Arab springs," "Ukrainian springs," and eventually collapse.
Is Mario unaware that foreign observers during an election is not a new thing? In 2016 their presence prevented voter fraud at some polling stations.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/785340/foreign-observers-report-incidents-of-vote-buying-violence |
Besides several reports of vote-buying and violence in polling precincts, a group of foreign observers on Thursday concluded that the 2016 Philippine election was “generally orderly and peaceful.”
The Compact for Peaceful and Democratic Elections—International Observers Mission (Compact-IOM) detailed during a press conference in Manila the experience of 15 foreign delegates who were deployed to monitor 91 precincts in Cotabato, Maguindanao, Bohol, Dinagat Islands and Santiago in Isabela.
Coordinator Arnold Tarrobago said Compact-IOM has been organizing observation missions since 2004 to bring “positive influences on the election process.”
Citing people on the ground, he said, “The presence of election observers in their area prevented or helped prevent incidences of fraud and violence that they were expecting to happen.”
Despite this, the delegates observed crowded precincts where other people could easily see the ballots of people voting.
The group in Cotabato also received reports from the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) that their poll watchers were pulled out from six precincts after “threatening men came into the voting rooms, instructed them to take off their PPCRV identifying t-shirts then proceeded to order them out of the room.”
Batongbacal quoted the local PPCRV as saying that the men “took over the voting rooms and vote counting machine (VCM) machines. And they started shading and feeding ballots into the machine.”
They also visited a city hall and an elementary school in Maguindanao that were bombed before the elections.
In Bohol, German national Dominik Hammann said that most precincts were well-organized. It was mostly peaceful, he said, although there were claims of vote-buying, including threats to cut off the beneficiaries’ access to the government’s conditional cash transfer program.
Were these delegates from the USA, Germany, Sweden, and Japan meddling with the election? No. In fact their presence was a good thing.
"Rappler is the 'least trusted' media entity in the country. This is like a 'free-pass' on Rappler to mold public opinion. And given their known bias toward other candidates, their participation can only heighten the public's apprehension that the coming election would not be fair, credible and transparent," argued National Press Club President Paul Gutierrez. How was the spokesman for Comelec James Jimenez able to get the Comelec Acting Chairman Socorro Inting to sign the memorandum of agreement with Rappler?
How the heck would Rappler mold public opinion if they are the least trusted media entity in the country? That makes no sense and it is this ability to craft the news and shape public opinion that Mario is claiming will lead to war. But apparently no one believes them. So, how will it work? It won't.
After Ukraine, the Philippines is next. We should avoid becoming the Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen of Asia.
What a conclusion. What a baseless and ridiculous conclusion. Mario did not offer a shred of proof for his claim that the Philippines may be headed for war because of the Rappler/COMELEC partnership. The Philippines is a strategic ally of the United States. Why in the world would they want to turn it into a battle zone? The only country marching towards war in this region of the world is China. North Korea is too but they do not pose the same threat to the Philippines as China does and there are many in this country who would let them have their way.
This opinion piece is stupid. Mario is entitled to his opinion but since it is not rooted in reality it is best to toss it in the garbage.
Let's look at another article about the Rappler/COMELEC partnership which is more grounded than the gibberish Mario has pulled out of his hat.
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| https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/03/06/opinion/columns/the-disturbing-comelec-rappler-partnership/1835223 |
IS there a plot to get the presidential elections in May declared a failure if survey-topping candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. looks set to win?
This column will address a related and crucial question: Will the nation and the world, especially the tens of millions voting for Marcos, assuming he wins, accept the claim of election failure?
After all, in a Marcos victory, especially a landslide, there would probably be far more Filipinos disputing claims of poll irregularities than supporting them. How can their collective voices be countered or silenced?
In this column Ricardo Saludo assumes that in the event Bongbong Marcos Jr wins the election Rappler will declare that the election was a failure claiming Bongbong did not legitimately win. He then looks at a few ways how those who would dispute any declared failure of elections would be silenced.
First, the Comelec partnership projects Rappler as an impartial, expert election news and information source, despite its widely perceived leanings against the Duterte administration and the Marcos family, and in favor of the opposition, especially Vice President Maria Leonor "Leni" Robredo.
Second, Rappler has the most powerful ally in projecting and propagating its reports and views as valid, fair and true, especially on the biggest and most influential social media platform wielding immense sway across the Philippines and the planet: Facebook.
Since 2018, Rappler has been FB's fact-checking partner in the country. Hence, in social media jousts between Rappler and groups disputing its accounts, no prizes for guessing which of them FB's fact-checking partner would likely disparage as dubious or even block altogether.
The third and perhaps biggest factor in propagating Rappler's perspective on the elections is the West's agenda for the Philippines, which is now dominated by the geopolitical rivalry between America and China.
While American Embassy charges d'affaires Heather Variava maintains that the United States can work with whoever becomes the next Philippine President, it much prefers a leader who would fully implement the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), allowing massive rotations of US forces in the country with access to our military bases, starting with those in Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Cebu, Puerto Princesa and Cagayan de Oro.
Will Western media and tech giants go along with the West's agenda and affirm claims of election failure in the Philippines? Well, that same media adopted as gospel truth one untruth disseminated by Rappler for years: the false report that the Philippine National Police (PNP) had killed tens of thousands of people in President Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign.
Now, if the West decides that voiding a Marcos victory and supporting a power grab by a losing candidate willing to implement EDCA is in its geopolitical interest, then we may see Rappler's claims of election anomalies played up across the world, while contrary reports and opinions are silenced, just like perspectives supporting Russia or opposing mass Covid vaccination.
At that point, the only question remaining is whether the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with its decades of close relations with the US military, would back another "people power" uprising, fueled by claims of election fraud.
In such a scenario, which would hopefully never happen, Philippine democracy and independence may well be lost.
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| https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2019/07/how-many-people-have-died-as-result-of.html |
Ricardo Saludo's scenario ends with the AFP having to decide if they will back another "people power" which would be fueled by reports of election failure. But how exactly would it escalate to that point? Rappler does not control all the media in the Philippines. There are many media organizations such as GMA, ABS-CBN, PNA, Philstar, and The Manila Times. If Rappler is the least trusted news organization and is reporting something provably false and everyone else is contradicting them how could a claim of election failure rise to the level of a new "people power" involving the AFP? Why would the AFP forcibly oust Marcos if they knew Rappler was lying and he legitimately won?
Not to mention that the US envoy said the US would work with whoever is elected. So, why would the US incite actions to remove Marcos if he wins? There are also ten candidates on the ballot. Which one would the US pick to be the winner? Why does it have to be Robredo? What if Pacquiao wins? Will this scenario kick into high gear in order to get Robredo in the Palace?
This article is a lot more sober than the first one warning that Rappler is turning the Philippines into another Ukraine which will inevitably result in war. It is not any less paranoid and ridiculous.
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