Pestilence
Leni's PR handlers must be extremely busy these days. After a series of unfortunate events hit the Office of the Vice President in an unrelenting barrage (starting from her removal from the cabinet, to the pregnancy rumors, to her ill-timed US trip, to her bus-riding exposition, to the lenileaks conspiracy, to the Vin d'Honneur snub), no signs yet exist that could hint to the end of her misfortunes.
Her curious silence [Collective: A Sudden Conspicuous Silence] and reckless pronouncements [Collective: Shameless] only added fuel to the fire, which has now turned into a raging inferno, a tumultuous tempest of a conflagration that no PR strategy can effectively douse much less contain. The winds have carried the fire to reaches far beyond their latitude [Collective: Authenticity], and the best response they could possibly muster is to come back with their own ridiculous memes.
Pitiful.
In ancient Japan, where honor was considered paramount to life itself, such adversities would drive the afflicted to disembowel oneself as an honorable alternative to disgrace or execution.
But we live in modern times. And long-established virtues like honor and dignity, regrettably, no longer exist.
What we have an abundance of are thick-skinned hypocrites who would continually lie, cheat, deceive and manipulate the truth even when exposed [Collective: Goodbye De Lima].
Let me get a few things straight before Leni and her cabal of insidious truth contortionists distract us further from the real issue.
The element of underlying importance here, which is requisite to understanding the truth, is context.
A few examples.
When Atty. Bruce Rivera exposed Leni's bus riding charade as a ludicrous travesty [Phil], even going as far as having his friend excruciatingly reenact the scene like the Passion of the Christ, Leni's handlers immediately released a statement from Isarog Lines, the bus company that shuttled Leni from Magallanes to nationwide stardom. For whatever it's worth, that classic bus ride has transformed Mrs. Robredo from a relatively obscure congresswoman into the country's national emblem of humility.
I'm no longer gonna show you the photo in question since it is unlikely that by now you haven't chanced upon one of those outrageously hilarious memes, unless of course, you're living under a rock which would disqualify any possibility of you reading this article.
So allow me to proceed. Here's a screenshot of Isarog's disclaimer:
Okay. So the bus company claimed that they did in fact pick her up at that exact location thereby refuting Atty. Rivera's assertion that it was faked. Perfect. End of story.
But wait... That the bus picked her up at that exact spot in Magallanes is not the issue. More important than the actual circumstances involved in that controversial photograph is the intent.
And the intent, ladies and gentlemen, is to make us believe that since Leni is a government official, a duly elected representative at that, taking the bus on her way home to Naga is an extremely rare act of unquestionable humility. She is not coño, like her peers in congress. She is selfless and extraordinarily modest. She detests warrantless extravagance and abhors gratuitous excess. She is as rare as rocking horse crap. She is one of us.
Now this is where this shit gets exciting. Guess who took that photo and posted it on social media? A gal named Keisha Del Castillo. It was Leni in fact, who confirmed this particularly incriminating detail.
And who is Keisha Del Castillo? It turns out that Keisha is a member of her own staff.
Now if Leni was indeed as humble as she was later widely perceived to be, then why post this picture on social media in the first place? And in her own Facebook page! And this is not the only time she did this. Remember this?
The answer folks, which at that time seemed as dark and impenetrable as night, lies in these two succeeding photographs, published years later when Leni would run for Vice President as an advocate and defender of the so-called laylayan ng lipunan (fringes of society):
Yes, folks. As painful as it is to accept the hard and undeniable truth, WE WERE DUPED.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, was the original intent.
And this, let me reiterate, is the context of this whole discussion. The fact that the bus indeed picked her up at Magallanes is immaterial. It does not deny the fact that Leni's actions were intentionally staged to deceive us into believing that she is what she's not. That the whole bus riding and red carpet evading farce was a mere publicity stunt.
Now since Leni found out that we were all a bunch of mindless buffoons [Politics], she gave us more of what we wanted:
Walking the earth barefooted while her companions were all wearing shoes? Taking the 10 hour bus ride to Naga when she owns not just one but several cars? Taking the back stairs during the SONA to avoid publicity then shamelessly posting the act on her Facebook page? Walking barefooted in these images when unengineered photos show her wearing expensive designer shoes?
This here is the part when those of us who originally bought this shit would want to just crawl in a corner and die.
How many more hypocrisies and contradictions must Leni and her team shove down our throats? She says she doesn't want to make a big deal out of the Vin D'Honneur snub yet she mentioned it in her interviews. She acted as an Immaculate Virgin when she lambasted the President for his remarks on her knees yet she doesn't deny having an affair with a married congressman. She utters moralistic statements about the distribution of condoms in campuses on the grounds that it promotes promiscuity... Well, let me leave this one as it is.
Leni Robredo has taken up so much of our space since we started Collective. And I suspect she'll take much more of our precious time in the days to come if she continues with this inanity.
An unsolicited advice to her staff: Just give her enough rope to get this over with.
She has become an affliction.
An ungodly pestilence of a scourge.
