The initial reports of the voting indicate a possible debacle of the Na[c]ionalista senatorial candidates. The cities and urban centers have all voted straight Liberal in general. The rural areas while still awaited may show a split vote.
So the best the Nacionalista senators may get may be three or two out of the eight.
For two years now we have been the subject of criticism, bitter and vicious, by all the newspapers and other media. False news as well as slanted reporting was a consistent pattern of the last two years.
And we had no way of answering. Our efforts to do so were late and ineffectual.
In the provinces, the radio and TV news monopolized by our critics.
Then came the rice shortage, the increase of prices and Plaza Miranda with its bombing.
And the concocted stories of corruption like the Buhda [Buddha] case as well as fraud like the alleged false ballots in the C-47 that crashed in Mactan.
However, our local candidates seem, to be winning. Which shows that the national issues of prices, rice and Plaza Miranda were effective against the national candidates—and the local candidates not held jointly liable for them.
It may also indicate that the activists and subversives have obtained the support of the affluent as well as the lower class.
So we must now fear for a growing strength of the subversives that will be shown in various violent ways in the future.
They may now become over-grasping and force a showdown of force or slowly peck at the strength of the government and thus cause it to waste away in indecisive battles of attrition.
For one thing we must now prepare for the violence in action of the communists who will be encouraged and continued spite of the political opposition and the oligarchs who have tasted first blood.