Reliable sources have told me that the bigwigs of the camp of Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo held emergency meetings at the Veep's office in New Manila, Quezon City and at the Rockwell condo complex in Makati until late Thursday. The meetings were reportedly called in order to come up with a strategy to counteract the revelations of electoral fraud in the 2016 elections which were being made in the Senate based on two privilege speeches made by Senate President Vicente Sotto III.


Robredo's handlers are apparently in a state of panic because the Senate investigation seems to be leading inexorably to the protest case filed by former senator Ferdinand Marcos against Robredo. Which is really strange, because Sotto and the main resource person in this week's initial hearing, the sensational anti-electoral fraud crusader Glenn Chong, only discussed the alleged fraud committed two years ago in a generic, non-specific manner during the hearing; only known defenders of Robredo in attendance at the chamber like Sen. Franklin Drilon kept bringing up the Marcos protest case.

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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-6/marcos-bongbong-sm.webp" alt="Bongbong Marcos" />
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(Bongbong Marcos)
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Those who watched the hearing, which was not reported by mainstream print and broadcast media outlets, will remember how Drilon shamelessly attempted to link Chong to the Marcos camp and his protest against Robredo. Drilon did this by insinuating that Chong got his data from the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (clearly a lie) and by claiming that the lawyer had been engaged as counsel by Marcos (an even bigger lie).



By the way, the Robredo camp was wildly successful in "killing" the story of Chong's explosive revelations, which were covered by the usual array of reporters, photographers and cameramen assigned to the Senate. Those in charge of this very expensive propaganda campaign were so good at their job that they apparently even "convinced" government station PTV4 not to air the hearing live and the local gatekeepers of popular social media platform Facebook to take down pages that shared the YouTube video of the proceedings posted by the Senate.


But will they be able to stop the coverage of the hearings — or, heaven forbid, the hearings themselves? I understand the second hearing on Sotto's charges has been scheduled for next week; I guess we'll find out then.


What's important to remember is that Robredo and her camp followers have decided that the Sotto hearings are intended in some way to lead to the removal of the vice president — the only remaining Yellow of any political significance — and her replacement with Marcos. There is absolutely no truth to support this belief at the moment, of course.

 
But my own position is, what alarms the Yellows is always a good thing, never mind if it has factual basis or not. After all, these are the same people who believe that something doesn't necessarily have to be true — it just has to appear that way.



Sources: 

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The Stop-Bongbong Show, <a href="https://goo.gl/gSEvo9" class="news_link" target="_blank" title="Source">Jojo Robles</a>, August 4, 2018, The Manila Times
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(This article is adapted from the source listed above. We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction other than social media shares.)

The Stop-Bongbong Show: It doesn't have to be true - it just has to appear that way