President Rodrigo Duterte’s Communications Secretary Martin Andanar
hristmas is still more
than 11 months away but I have already been inundated with emails, phone
calls and Facebook messages from friends begging to be invited to my
next Christmas party all thanks to the “LeniLeaks” charge of Pres.
Duterte’s Communications Secretary Martin Andanar that the Christmas
party at my San Francisco home on December 22, 2016 was the setting of a
sinister plot to oust Pres. Duterte.
In his January 7, 2017
“Mancave" podcast entitled “Leni Leaks: Truth or Lies”, Andanar accused
New York philanthropist and community leader Loida Nicolas Lewis of
mobilizing Filipino Americans in San Francisco to call for the
resignation of Duterte in order to benefit Vice President Leni Robredo.
Andanar had previously
drawn the front page banner headline of the Philippine Star on September
20, 2016 when he charged that “some Filipino-Americans in New York are
hatching a plan to oust President Duterte by January 2017” (“Oust
Duterte drive hatched in New York – Andanar”).
But his propaganda
campaign against Fil-Ams in New York fizzled then because it was based
on pure hearsay. “I was just talking to somebody in New York now who
is also a member of the Cabinet – I won’t mention his name. But he also
heard of the Fil-Ams in New York who are planning. They are hatching a
plan to oust the President by January 2017,” Andanar said in the
news article (LINK).
NEW TARGET: SAN FRANCISCO FIL-AMS
Andanar's new target
this time around is clear in the "breaking news" article of Duterte
supporter John “Boboy” Shinn III, editor of the L.A. Zamboanga Times,
who posted “exclusive photos” of Loida Nicolas Lewis and an
“anti-Duterte group” attending a Christmas party in San Francisco.
Here is Shinn’s report which was widely shared with Duterte supporters
in the social media on January 7, 2017, the day after Andanar's podcast:
“LOS ANGELES --- A
Loida Nicolas Lewis-inspired group of Filipino-Americans met in San
Francisco, California, USA with a get-together December 22, 2016 at the
residence of Atty. Rodel Rodis in San Francisco, California which was
attended by Loida Nicolas-Lewis, Inquirer columnist Randy David,
Inquirer reporter Benjamin Pimentel, Greg Macabenta, Inquirer columnists
Atty. Ted Laguatan and Atty. Rodel Rodis, who hosted the party.
It was also during
this gathering that the group launched Filipino Americans for Human
Rights Alliance (FAHRA), another lobby group in Loida Nicolas Lewis'
campaign to oust democratically-elected Philippine President Rodrigo
Duterte.
From the looks of
it all, the Inquirer is leading the oust Duterte campaign in the U.S.
with the financial help and guidance of Lewis and her network of
connections in the U.S. news media and the Democratic Party.”
Boboy Shinn, whose day
job is listed as "paparazzi photographer", claimed that he had obtained
the “exclusive” photos at my Christmas party. In truth, Shinn lifted the
photos from my Facebook page which I posted on the night of the
Christmas party.
Shinn also falsely
reported the attendance of Inquirer columnists Randy David and Benjamin
Pimentel at my Christmas party to support his lie that “from the looks
of it”, the Inquirer is behind the ouster plot.
While there were
Superior Court judges, Catholic priests and Protestant pastors as well
as presidents of local Filipino community organizations who are members
of the Filipino American Human Rights Alliance (FAHRA) who were at my
Christmas party, Prof. Randy David and Benjamin Pimentel were not among
them.
INQUIRER
COLUMNISTS NOT AT PARTY
In his Facebook post
on January 8, Pimentel wrote:
“For the record: I
am not part of a U.S.-based group (supposedly led by Loida Nicolas Lewis
whom I've never met) seeking to oust the fascist Philippine president
who instigated the bloodbath that has so far killed more than 5,000
people.
I also was not at a
Christmas Party of said group that is conspiring to depose a leader who
openly brags about killing people without due process. Said party was
held at the home of Rodel Rodis. He did not invite me :(
To the alleged
plotters working to overthrow a president who once joked about raping a
female hostage and who is now begging Putin to be his protector, could
you schedule the next Christmas party on a weekend please, not the
middle of the week? Will we have to bring a gift?”
Pimentel’s Facebook
friend, John Gershman, responded to his post with this advice: “Dude.
You need to shift your work schedule to be more available so that
conspiracy theorists can more accurately place you in places you
aren't.”
Another Facebook
friend, Vivian Araullo, told Pimentel that she was at the Christmas
party but heard no discussions about overthrowing Duterte. “Maybe the
coup was being plotted in between karaoke singing and lechon?” she
surmised.
In his January 8, 2017
Inquirer column (Public Lives: The “conspiracy” to oust Duterte),
Prof. Randy David wrote about receiving an angry email from a “former
avid fan” who asked him if he was “part of the team to oust President
Duterte”.
David investigated the
source of the rant and learned that it referred to a November 12, 2016
“email addressed to me and a couple of other people I know, written
by an old UP friend from the ’60s, Ted Laguatan, a vigorous human rights
campaigner against the Marcos dictatorship and now a prominent US-based
immigration lawyer. In that letter, he was basically proposing the
organization of “mass protests against Duterte’s extrajudicial killings
and Marcos burial.”
Vintage Ted, I
thought to myself. Young people were already busy organizing around
these issues long before anyone could tell them…. Having just read it, I
can say in all honesty that I found no reference to, or any intimation
of, any plan to resort to extraconstitutional means to oust President
Duterte.”
Business World
columnist Greg Macabenta can attest to the absence of Pimentel and David
at my Christmas party because he was there “and so were many other
prominent Filipino Americans who have been openly condemning the burial
of the late President Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani and have been
bitterly protesting Duterte’s anti-drug campaign—a campaign that has
made accusers, judges, and executioners out of unidentified vigilantes
and members of the Philippine National Police,” he wrote.
Shinn’s fake news
article was disseminated by Sass Rogando Sassot and Mocha Uson, the
“generals” in Duterte’s vast online army of trolls who were enlisted by
Andanar to go after Loida Lewis and Filipino Americans opposed to
Duterte.
DUTERTE'S
ARMY OF TROLLS
In Mocha Uson’s
youtube directive to her Duterte army of trolls, she paused to read an
email message to her purportedly from Secretary of Justice Vitaliano
Aguirre informing her that a source had told him that Robredo and Lewis
had met in the US. This bit of double hearsay was enough for Uson to
tell her followers to spread the word that Robredo and Lewis are “liars”
for denying that they met in the United States and that they should be
exposed.
Screengrab from the LeniLeaks website
The timing of the
simultaneous social media attacks on “LeniLeaks” is not coincidental as
Communications Secretary Andanar oversees both the vast propaganda
machinery of the Philippine government bureaucracy as well as the
formidable online Duterte army of trolls ready to pounce and attack
anyone perceived to be a threat to Duterte.
In an article that
appeared in New Republic (“Rodrigo Duterte’s Army of Online Trolls:
How authoritarian regimes are winning the social media wars” January
4, 2017), Sean Williams explained the origin of Duterte’s troll army:
“Duterte’s social
media campaign began while he was the mayor of Davao, where he allegedly
ran death squads to curb rampant drug dealing and other street crime. In
November 2015, when he decided to run for president, he enlisted a
marketing consultant named Nic Gabunada to assemble a social media army
with a budget of just over $200,000. Gabunada used the money to pay
hundreds of prominent online voices to flood social media with
pro-Duterte comments, popularize hashtags, and attack critics. Despite
being vastly outspent by his rivals, Duterte swept to power with almost
40 percent of the vote. After the upset victory, the new president’s
spokesman issued a warm thanks to Duterte’s 14 million social media
“volunteers.”
The government pays
online trolls up to $2,000 a month to create fake social media accounts
and flood the digital airwaves with propaganda.
The Philippines
seems tailor-made for this kind of propaganda machine. The median age in
the country is only 23 years old, and almost half of its 103 million
citizens are active social media users. Access to Facebook is provided
free with all smartphones, but Filipinos incur data charges when
visiting other web sites, including those of newspapers. As a result,
millions of citizens rely on social media for virtually all their news
and information, consuming a daily diet of partisan opinion that
masquerades as fact.”
But Andanar’s
Operation “LeniLeaks” may be running out of steam. When he sought to
include the issue in the Duterte cabinet meeting on January 9, he was
shot down by Duterte National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, Jr.
who told the press “the President and his Cabinet members had other
important issues to deal with rather than focus on the so-called “LeniLeaks.”
Even Secretary of
Justice Vitaliano Aguirre agreed with Esperon and minimized the
significance of what Loida Nicolas Lewis is calling for. “She is calling
for the VP to become president. She is calling for the resignation of
the president… she is a dreamer... As long as they do not violate the
law, there is nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong to dream,” Aguirre
told reporters.
DUTERTE
RESIGN MOVEMENT
In a TV interview on
ABS-CBN, Loida Nicolas Lewis denied that there was any plot to oust
Duterte. “The Duterte Resign Movement is based on President Duterte's
own words that he would resign if drugs are still rampant six months
after his inauguration,” she said.
Lewis also emphasized
that “dissent is NOT equivalent to a plot or conspiracy. In a
democracy, opinions of varying shades, either praise or criticism, are a
staple ingredient of a vibrant democracy. Since when has criticism
become an element of sedition?”
When asked to comment
on Lewis’ charge that Duterte had promised to resign if he did not
succeed in dealing with the country’s drug problems within six months,
Andanar replied: “the President asked for an extension.”
So when will the
Filipino people be asked to vote on Duterte’s extension request?
Since Andanar could
not even get the Duterte cabinet to take his “LeniLeaks” charge
seriously, he had to change his strategy. His Presidential
Communications Office (PCO) released a statement that “it is now up to
Vice President Leni Robredo to convince the public whether the so-called
‘LeniLeaks’ are true or not.”
In other words, since
Communications Secretary Andanar can’t prove Robredo guilty,
Vice-President Robredo will now have to prove to the public that she is
innocent.
Martin Andanar is
nothing if not obsessively persistent and clever by half. Published 1/20/2017
(Send comments to
Rodel50@gmail.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at
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