The Rise and Fall of Manny Villar’s Attempted Takeover of Malacanang 2010
Error No. 1. He underestimated the campaign of Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, with whom he shares the sentiments of the poor Filipino voters and thought that he could garner all their support in his favor to outbid Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III for the presidency. With both of Villar and Estrada now sharing 20% each, their combined support would have been enough to hurdle Aquino’s 39% support base as of the last SWS Survey in mid-April 2010. Perhaps we could blame this on the immature advise he got from his closed group of young Senators and Congressmen in his team. Or if we could give them more credentials, we could blame it on his own influence on the decisions of his team, if we have to look at this failure from a different angle.
Error No. 2. Villar effectively used his advertising campaign but only managed to gain ‘name recall’ out of the billions of pesos he spent for his television advertisements with such powerful casts that include Dolphy, Manny Pacquiao, and Willie Revillame. Villar failed to include real and true messages into his campaign advertisements that when the veracity of his claims on his poor beginnings, swim in the sea of garbage, and the death of his brother due to lack of money, the lies stuck to the ‘name recall’ that his tv ads had successfully achieved. The ‘name recall’ in effect helped people remember that he has lied in his tv commercials. The ‘name recall’ was so effective that even Baby James blurted out his name during a campaign sortie of Aquino. However, it is how people remember you that matters in gaining their support and in this instance, people recall his name for the lies he made in his tv ads.
Error No. 3. He underestimated the power of the middle class which supported Aquino and who are the employers of most of his marginalized support base that had swung back and forth between Villar and Estrada, as can be noted in the rise in the support of Estrada everytime Villar’s support dwindles.
Error No. 4. His standard reply to questions on issues of corruption in the C-5 Extension Project, the PSE meeting that helped launch the IPO for his holding company and his unloading of his shares one week before the crash of the IPO price which raked his group over 23 billion pesos at the expense of the investors who were sucked into the IPO of his holding company with the PSE, that these issues are simply politically motivated, did not hold water with the glaring confirmations of the events. Again, his standard reply was swallowed hook-line-and-sinker by his supporters from the marginalized sector but did not hold water with their employers in the middle class.
Error No. 5. His use of his mother, Aling Curing, to defend his lies also lost him support from the main support base as it was a totally opposed to the way Estrada shielded his mother, Dona Mary, through all the emotional and physical pain his ouster and eventual conviction for plunder would bring. Again, Villar did not recognize that he and Estrada were fighting for the support of the same group of voters from the marginalized sector.
Error No. 6. When he allowed Gilbert Remulla to meet the older Ampatuan in March 2010, in a desperate move to gain what Companero Alan Peter Cayetano termed as ‘block votes’, followed by the reversal of support of the younger Ampatuan from Villar to Aquino, which no Filipino voter would believe, unless they lived in a mental institution, Villar alienated himself from the vast majority of Filipinos, who condemned the Maguindanao Massacre.
Error No. 7. When he attacked Aquino personally with two fake psychiatric reports, he showed his irreverence to Aquino’s martyred father, Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, Jr. and his late mother, Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino, a fatal mistake not to acknowledge that one of the best traits of the Filipino is ‘utang na loob’. Villar failed to realize that the Filipino people loved the Aquinos, if only for the sacrifices made by Aquino’s parents for the restoration of democracy in the Philippines after over twenty years of martial rule by the late Ferdinand Marcos. Had he analyzed the life and love of Kris Aquino, Villar would have recognized and respected this deep love of the Filipino people for the Aquino family, out of ‘utang na loob’. Kris Aquino has made disastrously serious mistakes in her personal and public life that would have been fatal to the career of any other public personality. But the fact that Kris Aquino survived all her personal and public crisis and remains the most sought after product endorser today, proves that the Filipino people has forgiven and will always forgive Kris on all of her past mistakes and wants her to stay with them in their daily lives.
By and large, these seven sins of Manny Villar sealed the fate of his ambition to take over Malacanang in 2010.
Sad knowing that Villar has gained much of where he is now from the millions of Filipinos who supported his business interests in the past.
Palaboy nang Sydney 