There are so many pressing problems in the Philippines today that directly affect the majority of the population. Some people are focusing too much on China and making it look like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency is a failure just because they don’t agree with his foreign policy.
This is a dishonest position to take as the only fair way to evaluate an administration is to view it over the full range of initiatives and activities it is engaged in. The fact that the entirety of the key Opposition coalition suffered a catastrophic defeat in this year’s elections attests to the reality that a large swathe of the Philippine public’s concerns were not addressed by the Opposition campaign rhetoric.
The continued focus of Opposition chatter on foreign policy, whilst an easy target because it lends well to glib simplification into lame sound bytes, simply does not resonate with ordinary Filipinos. This is the reason there is a big gap in the Opposition’s understanding of what will move Filipinos and a source of the frustrations they experience in their efforts at inciting “mass action”.
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