Joanna M.

DUlong

#OUSTDuterte; the call of the pseudo political experts

A new type of corona virus was discovered late of December 2019 which caused a lockdown in
certain cities of China, South Korea and Italy. This novel corona virus which is eventually named as
COVID-19, has exponentially spread throughout the world, including the Philippines, and killed
thousands of people. As the virus came to the country by 2020, many Filipinos were clamoring for travel
bans from the countries which have cases of COVIS-19. Others criticized the government’s slow
response over the recent outbreak. As the virus settled in our country and continued to multiply, most
of these twitter warriors and pseudo political experts thought of the administration as a puppet to
Chinese government and took advantage of the phenomenon to insert their political stance. Also, they
backlash other Filipino who supported the decision of the President, invalidating their judgment and
automatically call them DDS. While they are doing that, other of their allies have gone to the streets and
expressed their ideals, wanting the current President to step down. Others will make troll accounts just
to insult you and your low level of thinking.

As a young Filipino who living in the era where you are entitled to voice out your ideas, I find it
unreasonable to always criticize one’s actions just because you don’t support one’s ideology. If we will
recall, these were the same people who criticized the past government administrations. Fully, I disagree
with their ideology.

First, Idealism tells us that reality exists essentially as spirit or consciousness, at least, that
whatever exists is known in dimensions that are chiefly mental—through and as ideas. In layman’s term,
whatever you thought as perfect, in reality, it has to be perfect. When reality hits you, idealistic people
will never be happy. Will I support every decision of our President? Yes, definitely. It is because I voted
him and I may disagree with some of his decisions but I know in some ways, he knows what he is doing.
These opportunists were trained by the people who wanted to oust the administration and to influence
other people, saying that the community deserves better.

Second, these political pseudo experts were crippled by their ego. They were taught by their
school, which you know what school I’m talking about, about freedom of expression. Yes, as a
democratic country, we were told to give our opinion about everything. However, an old proverb said;
what we call freedom is really the right to restrict our freedom in our own way. Intelligent people will
always look for logical reasons about everything, and critical thinkers will always find missing links.
These people mostly do not talk much about their opinion. They just do what they can do. As the
famous quote, silent waters run deep. So, do we consider these people as critical thinkers? I will let you
decide.

Lastly, they will always look for the advantage and highlight oppression. This common reasoning
is never funny because my family was once belonging to the minority. My family came from B’laan tribe,
an indigenous tribe of Sarangani province. Never once I heard my family called out the government
about anything. Why? Because if we looked deeper, there are a lot of opportunities that our
government offer. Not just about the agriculture, but also the current pandemic we are in. We just have
to make a move to reach out, not complain.

Our President is very exhausted by the things on his plate. He never complains nor call out the
help of these “intellectuals” who consistently criticize him. Because of his sincere efforts, he influenced
businessmen to donate anything they could give for the people. As of these pseudo political experts, I
did not hear any of them taking the risk, not even going to the checkpoints to replace the military.
References:

 Aphorisms for Artists by Walter Darby Bannard. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://aphorismsforartists.com/book/too-much-freedom-is-a-dangerous-thing
 Aspinwall, N. (2020, February 10). Filipinos Turn on Duterte as Coronavirus Fears Spread.
Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/10/wuhan-china-philippines-tsinoy-filipinos-
turn-on-duterte-as-coronavirus-fears-spread/
 Jr, S. M. S. (n.d.). [OPINION] Ceasefire in the time of coronavirus. Retrieved from
https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/254839-opinion-ceasefire-time-coronavirus
 Robinson, D. S. (2018, March 12). Idealism. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/idealism
 Unlisted. (n.d.). Updates on the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. Retrieved from
https://www.philstar.com/happens/838