CASUALTIES OF ELECTIONS

 

“This election is like a war!” (Platoon, 1986 Oliver Stone film)

It is not only in a movie. The analogy between election and war is in our real world. A 2017 study by the Center for Security Studies on “Hotspot Analysis: Cyber and Information Warfare in elections in Europe” reported that “after the hack of the US Democratic National Committee by Russian groups during the US presidential election, France, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands started to worry about a similar scenario occurring during their own election processes.” The study added that “European states and civil society actors took a series of measures to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and attempted interference through a disinformation campaign.”

TRUTH

“In war, truth is the first casualty.” (Aeschylus, 456 B.C. – 524 B.C.)

Five months before the elections, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa delivered her Nobel Lecture in Oslo, on December 10, 2021, as excerpted below:

“Without facts, you can’t have the truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world’s existential problems: climate, coronavirus, and the battle for truth.

“That’s the problem facing countries with elections next year: among them, Brazil, Hungary, France, the United States, and my Philippines – where we are at a do or die moment with presidential elections on May 9. Thirty-five years after the People Power revolt ousted Ferdinand Marcos and forced his family into exile, his son, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is the front runner – and he has built an extensive disinformation network on social media, which Rappler exposed in 2019. That is changing history in front of our eyes.

“To show how disinformation is both a local and global problem, take the Chinese information operations taken down by Facebook in September 2020: it was creating fake accounts using AI-generated photos for the US elections, polishing the image of the Marcoses, campaigning for Duterte’s daughter, and attacking me and Rappler.”

And the rest is history.

HOPE

“A slap in the face,” Jose Ma. Montelibano asserted in his Inquirer column the recent elections were, for those with youthful idealism like Ethan Carlyle Co, currently a Grade 12 student at La Salle University. Aspiring to earn a law degree, Ethan is into politics, history, geography, and writing about his personal life and views on politics as shown by his Manila Bulletin piece below:

“On the cold and moonlit night of the eight of May, there was an unusual silence. A silence filled not with terror or grief, but a silence similar to how a theater goes into a hush before the start of a film. A silence filled with beaming yet wordless anticipation mixed with the sense of uncertainty and the fear of the unknown.

“Yes, we had months and countless conversations of preparing, promoting, and theorizing on how the results will be yet, especially to me, a first-time voter. The silence only brought an eerie realization. The thought stayed on my mind even as I drifted to sleep – that the fate of my future, those around me, and the unborn children of tomorrow, now hangs in a balance.

“In the end… it was already clear where the political wind was blowing.

“How could I have been so naïve? With all that I had read and watched about politics and history, how could I not have seen this coming? A feeling of defeat swept through our household and silence reared its head. Yet, for all the loss emerges a hope… Yes, we are allowed to expect the worst but I would keep an open mind to what the future will hold.”

As Jose Rizal wrote, “The youth is the hope of our future.”

FAITH

I wrote in my past ATABAY article “The Great Unfairness” which I would like to reiterate that the election disinformation had targeted mainly VP Leni receiving negative messaging while Marcos Jr. earned positive branding according to Tsek.ph study, a fact-finding collaboration of 34 academe, media, and civil society partners. Yvonne Chua, journalism professor, and Tsek.ph’s project leader reported:

“Robredo’s quotes have been mangled, twisted, [or] fabricated to make her look like she is spouting nonsense. She has been called, rather harshly, Madumb, lutang, tanga, utal-utal, [among others].”

Disinformation “is really priming the audience to rationalize [the Marcos] lies and distortions,” asserted Fatima Gaw, assistant professor of communication research at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

Worse, VP Leni’s daughter, Ms. Aika Robredo, was victimized by a “deepfake” – an ultrarealistic fake video where a target personality’s face is superimposed onto another person’s body through the use of artificial intelligence software.

In the early stages of those many years of mangling, twisting, and fabricating disinformation, VP Leni, instilled with Christian faith, had put up with tantamount to what the Bible says:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5:39)

With such seeming outlandish conduct in today’s dog-eat-dog society, VP Leni chose in ignoring the lies since they weren’t true anyway, hence recoiling from dignifying her bashers. But later she admitted her mistake in staying silent drawing on some people in believing the lies. So, she released a series of Facebook videos where she put down in black and white every lie thrown at her and debunked them one by one.

To the bitter end, VP’s belated earnest effort was an utter exercise in futility as this Chicago Tribune headline revealed, “New Study Proves Old Truth: Lies Travel Faster than Facts” highlighting the following satirical quotes:

“Falsehood flies and the Truth comes limping after it.” (Jonathan Swift)

“A Lie can travel around the world and back again while the Truth is lacing up its boots.” (Mark Twain}

And once again, the rest is history.

EPILOGUE

An excerpt of the article in Red Letter Christians by Corey Farr (who lives in Lebanon and works for both Syrian and Lebanese orphans and children at risk) speaks volumes about “turning the other cheek” that fits our political scene like a glove:

“[T]he offer of the other cheek was a way to unmask the power play, to non-violently subvert the system by playing right into the ridiculousness of it all. And this is not cowardly. It takes great courage. This subversive act flips the power dynamic. By turning the other cheek instead of cowering or striking back, the wounded party brings uncomfortable embarrassment and shame to the aggressor. The oppressive system has been caught with its pants down, and it doesn’t know what to do.”

No wonder the mere mention of the launch of the Angat Buhay NGO has scared the pants off the victors. That may be what the passage in Romans 12:20 implies: “By doing this, you will heap burning coals upon his head.”

Just as Mr. Montelibano concluded his column “A Slap In The Face” with his following far-seeing line, so too I would wrap this article up with the same line: “Beyond that, it leaves God with something to do.”