Sugar and spies

Sugar and spies | Daily Tribune

I have just come from Singapore to visit a sick friend (who, I am happy to report, has recovered quite dramatically from a major operation) and I chanced upon their general elections last Saturday (3 May). Unlike here, you hardly felt it; it was so orderly. No noisy motorcades, no traffic-inducing rallies, no giant billboards and posters placed indiscriminately, no vote-buying (open or disguised) and — most importantly — no killing each other.

In our country, it gets “curiouser and curiouser” (to quote Alice, in Wonderland) the closer we get to the homestretch of any election. Responding to escalating criticism against it, the Department of Agriculture tried to roll out President Marcos’ promise of P20 per kilo of rice, only for the stunt to blow up in the faces of its proponents as the rice is not only of inferior quality, but the entire exercise is extremely unsustainable due to the need for heavy subsidies from — what else — taxpayer money. In fact, the blowback was so bad the entire episode had to be canceled after only a day.

The press is also being muzzled (not that the administration hasn’t been trying for a while) with former ambassador and Arroyo Cabinet member Rigoberto “Bobi” Tiglao the latest victim of a justice department already deeply politicized and weaponized against the perceived enemies of those in power.

Then there are the “false flag” operations, with the government (once again) raising the bogeyman of Chinese intervention in our elections, in a disingenuous attempt to try to rally the people behind the administration. Which is weird when viewed in the background of the government welcoming hundreds of European Union “observers” not only to watch over our electoral exercise (a clear slap on the face of our Comelec, as if saying we can’t even take care of our own voting exercise), but purportedly to guard against “trolls and fake news.”

What the government seems to be saying is that it’s okay for the White Man to look over our shoulders in what should be a strictly internal affair, but we have to be paranoid about the Chinese.

Speaking of paranoia, it has become amusing how our law enforcers seem to see Chinese spies behind every tree trunk and under every rock. One Chinese who is a long-time resident of the country and employed by a navigation company to map out our roads has suddenly become an “infiltrator” tasked with surveying the military facilities.

Another caught atop a coconut tree was arrested for allegedly sabotaging our power grid. And yet another was claimed to be eavesdropping on Comelec communications by hanging around the Palacio del Gobernador.

It seems our government agents have been fossilized in ‘80s technology, since presently there is little need to have people on the ground to gather such information. We are quite sure that the People’s Liberation Army intelligence officers already know the location and layout of every military base in the country, Filipino or American.

And no one needs to be near a phone or computer, let alone climb a tree, to intercept communications. There are those things called satellites circling the earth, and digital experts are able to hack into telephone and internet connections, without breaking a sweat, in the comfort of their air-conditioned control rooms in Beijing.

The operatives hired by those in power to manipulate public opinion have got to be the stupidest in the world to think that even the average Filipino will fall for such buffoonery. The vast majority have enough street smarts to know when they are being played. The cycle of sugar (in the form of “ayuda” or, to be blunt, vote-buying), supposed Chinese spies, and everything not nice such as disinformation and intimidation, is not going to work this time.