1-ON-1 DEBATE CHALLENGE: VP LENI PLAYS QUEEN'S GAMBIT AND WINS

 

“Chess can also be beautiful.” (Beth Harmon, “The Queen’s Gambit” television drama)

In chess, two responses are on hand to counter Queen’s Gambit opening: to accept or to decline. VP Leni’s challenge for a 1-on-1 debate was declined by Marcos Jr. Unlike in chess, however, where a “decline” is a defensive move, Marcos Jr.’s decline was tantamount to his refusal to take the rare opportunity to explain to the Filipino voters, as the COMELEC has enjoined each presidential candidate, “what he stands for and why he deserves to be elected president for the next six years.”

Like in boxing, his “handlers” may cover up Marcos Jr.’s wimpy style he has shown during the whole campaign as a “rope-a-dope” maneuver – a boxing strategy of drawing punches while leaning against the rope. Unfortunately, the punches hitting Marcos Jr. are the punching combination of truths that hurt. Marcos Jr. is no Mohammad Ali – who employed the “rope-a-dope” maneuver in his world heavyweight championship fight. Marcos Jr. is lazy and weak as his father, Marcos Sr., asserted. As a leader, Marcos Jr. is an empty vessel. In leadership, you cannot give what you don’t have.

Like in a card game, since it is the election homestretch, the 1-on-1 debate challenge is a rare opportunity to highlight transparency: Putting all cards on the table. That is, it is being open and honest to the Filipino voters by revealing one’s positions and intentions on all raised issues in a forum without holding information back from the public and devoid of fear and deception. But Marcos Jr. seems to be keeping close to his chest his “trump cards” – historical revisionism, dubious surveys, and trolls – which he expects to propel him in achieving his presidential ambition.

1. HISTORICAL REVISIONISM

The overriding evidence of this “trump card” of deception which I always reiterate in every opportunity such as this article is this “embryo” of this Disinformation which was first spawned in 2014 as exposed by whistleblower Brittany Kaiser of the infamous Cambridge Analytica:

“When I joined Cambridge Analytica in 2014 we had already worked in the Philippines. There was a national campaign where my former company had gone in and undertaken national research to figure out what was the type of persona that would resonate best with voters…

“We had a request straight from Bongbong Marcos to do a FAMILY REBRANDING. This was brought in through internal staff at Cambridge Analytica and was debated. Some people didn’t want to touch it and there were others like our CEO Alexander Nix that saw it as a massive financial opportunity and asked us to write the proposal anyway. So, as you call it: HISTORICAL REVISIONISM.” (Underscoring mine)

2. SURVEY: GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT

“In computer science, garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is the concept that flawed, or nonsense (garbage) input data produces nonsense output. Rubbish in, rubbish out (RIRO) is an alternate wording.” (Wikipedia)

 “On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ … I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” (Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher)

Did it ever occur to anyone that nobody seems to ask who put into those “survey machines” the figures that could be wrong? Did it ever occur to anyone that the political analysis of the pundits mostly has been based on surveys that could be wrong?

Example: Why does Marcos Jr. lead in the surveys? And the pundit’s comprehensive answer overindulged the whole opinion page with gobbledygook – transforming Marcos Jr. into some kind of a Mr. Mystery Man and implying that more than half of Filipinos are suckers for such gibberish -- without even taking into account that the survey could be wrong.

“When you want to test for an illness or a disease, the doctor basically takes only a small sample [of a tissue] from you and that should help him detect what exactly is afflicting you.” (Ronald Homes, Pulse Asia President, justifying the relatively small sampling size.)

When one cannot even distinguish the basic difference between a homogenous human body and a heterogeneous national population, then something is so wrong with the crux of the whole process that we could just set aside the other survey flaws: non-stratification, biases, class exclusion, and the dubious outsourcing of data as Isko Moreno revealed during the infamous Easter press con.

“[W]e can prove to you na polluted yong survey, because we have an evidence already on hand… Pulse Asia and SWS may not know it, because they are the one analyzing it. But the raw data that they are getting… nahuli na namin yong gumagawa ng survey sa kalsada.” (Isko Moreno, presidential candidate)

Let me share again some passages from my past article “Election Survey Results: News or Propaganda?”

“The dirty little secret of … survey is – they are largely junk science placing marketing objectives of telling and selling a good story, above the practical and ethical objective of telling the truth… Often statistical methods are misused corrupting survey results while providing an air of scientific legitimacy…” (Excerpted from the article “Survey and Dirty Little Secret, Hidden Distortion, Bias – Illusion of Scientific Validity: Business Beware)

In fact, in the light of the recent polling and survey “black eye” worldwide, including the US 2016 & 2020 elections, uncompromising critics have propounded: a) polling or survey is irrevocably broken, and b) pollsters and polling purveyors should be ignored.

In the US, Real Clear Politics frequently cited by various media organizations, gets its average figure from the top 10 surveys among a horde of pollsters all over the US. For example, in presidential job approval, Real Clear Politics averages all the quality information of Rasmussen, Economist, Reuters, Politico, Gallup, GU Politics, IBD/TIPP, PPP, NPR/PBS/Marist, and NBC/Wall Street Journal, and The Hill. Here in PH, we put our whole eggs in a political basket of a handful of pollsters.

What can be more compelling an evidence of the survey flaws than this in-your-face fact: on the same Saturday night of the same date of April 23 in the same region of NCR, VP Leni’s mammoth 400,000+ Pasay crowd dwarfed 28-fold the 14,000 Sampaloc crowd of the so-called survey frontrunner Marcos Jr.

3. TROLLS AMONG US

Lady 1: May nag-hire sa akin. Sama tayo. Seguro mas malaki-laki yong rate mo kasi mas marami kang followers kaysa akin.

Lady 2: Ano pala yang trabaho na yan?

Lady 1: Madali lang. Pero mas marami pang benefits. Tingnan mo. Every weekend nagbabakasyon ako out-of-town. Tingnan mo ang gadgets ko, latest. Ang suot ko ngayon, branded.

Lady 2: Trolling?

            “[T]he estimated salary of a troll network moderator who churns out daily ‘script’ or talking points to defend the client ranges from P40,000 to P50,000 monthly; on the other hand, ‘micro-influencers’ (those with ‘only’ 10,000 followers) can earn P300,000 to P350,000, including bonuses, for a monthly retainer during the election season (one job offer shared by a source was pegged at P25,000 to P30,000 to manage a Facebook page, with a higher fee for anyone fluent in Ilocano).” (Manuel L. Quezon III, Inquirer columnist)

“Politicians are said to pay from P1.9 to P2.8 million per month for a retainer of up to eight months for a troll farm campaign on their behalf. Where are these companies? Many of them are based in ‘call centers hubs,’ according to the international watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which named the Philippines one of press freedom’s 20 worst digital predators in 2020.” (Inquirer Editorial)

With his “trump cards,” Marcos Jr. thinks he doesn’t need to explain to the Filipino voters what he stands for and why he deserves to be elected president for the next six years. So sad.