Déjà vu on the campaign trail

In the Philippines, we know what happened next. Candidate Leni was beaten at the polls by BBM by an almost-double margin, we’re told. But what Diaz focuses on—as this is, in a way, a companion piece to A Thousand Cuts, her previous documentary on media crackdown in the age of Duterte—is a parallel storyline involving Rappler chief Maria Ressa, her efforts to shine a clearer light on social media’s effect on politics, her own legal cases, and how it all intertwines with the fledgling Leni campaign.

Diaz’s cameras follow this story through the Duterte years, where we first encounter the former president praising his VP’s legs at a public function, advising her to wear “only skirts.” The focus on physical looks from an unwelcome male gaze does call to mind Donald Trump’s recent trolling/admiring of Kamala Harris in the US. More on that later.

What And So It Begins (an ominous LOTR reference) picks up on is a contrast between a candidate building grassroots support—building a plane in mid-air, so to speak—as she travels from province to province, speaking of hope, anti-poverty, inclusiveness, government “for the people”; on the other hand, there is the figure of BBM, reluctant to debate or do interviews when it becomes clear he leads heavily in the polls. Questions about martial law under Ferdinand Marcos are, curiously, welcomed by the candidate from Ilocos Norte at one press conference—and then quickly cut off when the media immediately start asking him some questions (“You misunderstood me. Not here and now”).

And so it begins. The matter is never properly addressed by the candidate, in any venue. BBM’s numbers surge. And Ressa finds, per Rappler’s social media analytics (ironically, using the same analytic tools and algorithms that Duterte used to flood the zone with negative campaigning in 2016), that the BBM campaign is effectively using attack ads to deflate Leni’s support, and tap into Filipinos’ short memories—especially regarding martial law. As one historian says in the film, memories of EDSA and martial law “had to skip a generation” to reach the online community, who are less circumspect about history and facts.

Here’s a fact: Much social media campaigning from the BBM side focused on martial law as a “golden age” for the Philippines, not on its abuses, and this selective memory is highlighted by Diaz in crystal-clear terms. Wishing the facts away, or refusing to talk about them, doesn’t make them any less factual.

Ressa, whose selection by the Nobel Peace Prize committee (sharing her prize with a similarly embattled Russian journalist) is woven into this narrative, talks about this very dilemma in her acceptance speech in Oslo: “How can you have election integrity if you don’t have integrity of facts?”

It’s a conundrum facing democracies across the world that thrive on free speech and free media, but are often boondoggled by competing versions of reality, “alternate facts” and straight-up lying.

For Duterte, Ressa finds, it was an “escalation” of rhetoric. Once he found Leni as Vice President to be less than fondly supportive of his drug wars and policies, he went from focusing on her looks (admiring) to labeling her “dumb” and incapable of leading when she announced her run against BBM. Then came the suggestions that she was a “communist” and a “terrorist.”

The path to demonizing—and dehumanizing—your opponent is taken straight from the Autocrats’ Handbook, so it’s no surprise that former president Donald Trump has used all of the above tactics against his new opponent, VP Kamala Harris. The attacks, at present, don’t appear to be working. 

And So It Begins gets at another nagging, persistent ingredient necessary for all democracies to function: hope. The film is indeed a sad commentary on local (and global) politics, but once Leni gets going, you can’t help but admire her supporters who go out and try to enlist every vote they can, from sari-sari vendors to sidewalk sitters. It’s a door-to-door approach: democracy on the move, on the march.

In the end, there is the stark contrast of a huge, surging pre-election night rally on Ayala Avenue, where it seems history will be made, that hope will win; versus final shots of empty campaign stages and hand-painted Leni-Kiko murals a few days later, all silent now, as though a hush has sucked the breath out of the room. 

Oh, I know people will say it doesn’t matter, that it’s for the history books. But for the Philippines, it does matter. It always will. Hope is that thing left inside Pandora’s Box after all the evils are set loose upon the world. You can’t quite kill it, as long as you call yourself human.