01/11/2024
Threats as Election Currency
By July 1, 2025, the Tulfo family breaks the meaning of dynasty by electing three brothers in the halls of the Senate.
This means they are assured of Php600M in pork barrel annually. The Tulfos now thumb the noses of the Estradas, Cayetanos, Gatchalians, and the Villars.
These latter families combined had amassed Php100B in pork for the last twenty years. Go compute. With these largesse courtesy of the voters, these dynasties shepherded the elections of their siblings in various local posts.
As mentioned heretofore, dynasties war machines did not come from the sweat of their brows but from the taxes extracted from you and me.
Spectacles like these,i.e., electing family members fueled by pork inveigled others in similar stature by mulling in silence, “bakit nga ba hindi, ‘di ba?”
Why lick the butt of a president just to have a cabinet post like the DSWD (Erwin) or DoTourism (Wanda Tulfo-Teo)? Why can’t we get an elective position courtesy of a frenetic electorate? After all, Robinhood Padilla, Tito Sotto, and the rest were catapulted to an exalted position previously occupied by the likes of Ambrosio Padilla or Vicente Sotto (author of Republic Act No. 53 or the Sotto Law popularly known as Press Freedom Law)
This trio can elect or oust a sitting senate president. They can frustrate an impeachment of a vice president. With Raffy, their senior in the senate, they can tweak the national budget and hold hostage a president or give a middle finger to the House of Thieves.
This trio can make or break the appointment of the president by filibustering the Commission on Appointments. These scenarios are what titillate this rambunctious triumvirate.
Right now they salivate by the realization of these possibilities. How to campaign is now on the table for discussion by this triad.
Do they have the wherewithal to launch a nationwide stump? Raffy has an idea. No money is involved for the first time in the history of Philippine politics ala Tulfo style. Yet, they look towards the direction of Ricky Razon and company. One video saw an ingratiating Ramon Ang grabbing the hand of Raffy Tulfo to get his unsolicited benediction. Are the industrialists/bankers/developers tremble on their heels?
Raffy T has made his reputation on media and the halls of the upper chamber: he can subpoena any local official and threaten him/her with contempt or detention. Attendant to being summoned is the prospect of national disgrace and derision on the “resource person”. (When he helmed the ‘Isumbong mo kay Tulfo,’ he could call any Tanod, Barangay Captain or Mayor or policemen or soldiers and berate them in public. Now that he is senator, he can summon any private individual who is implicated by a public official or employee testifying before his committee).
All that the two senate wannabes will do is divide the numbers of governors and mayors to be personally visited by the sibling-senate candidates as an unorthodox barnstorming right now until May, 2025.
First, they will persuade the local officials to support them: anyway they are on top of the surveys. Second, they promise a chunk of their pork or paki-usap the secretary of public works to be poured in the LGU of the target supporter. Lastly, here’s the clincher: support us or Raffy will find idiocy in your performance as local chief executive and hail you pronto to the senate. “If we lose, remember Raffy has still 3 years in the senate. You don’t want a repeat of Halili’s slay when Du30 lost in Tanauan in 2016? We don’t kill but we can drag you feet up in the senate where Raffy cuts you to pieces…!”
And that ladies and gentlemen is the way of winning two senate seats.
Sorry na lang kay Ipe Salvador who will lose his pundillo after the last ballot is counted.
