By Mortz C. Ortigoza
Running a political campaign is liked waging a war.
In my conversation with a newly minted high elective official, he told
me that running for governorship and a congressional seat in the 2022 election
a candidate should look for viable candidates to challenge the opponents who
are allied in these two positions.
“So the rival in either of
these two posts could spread thin his financial resources thus weakening them
and ensuring the victory of their opponents”.
He cited that these phenomena happened in the concluded May 13, 2019
election where the opponent in the national position lost because he was
preoccupied overseeing and funding many political fronts.
”Sus, it sounds Sun Tzu. They are no different in
war,” I
quipped.
“Why?” Another politico, who was part of a huddle, posed his question to
me.
I told him about the rash and audacity of Germany’s Fuhrer Adolf Hitler
when he launched his ambitious plan to conquer Great Britain and the vast land
Soviet Union, and waged wars in the Mediterranean and Africa against American General George Patton and British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.
“What happened there?”
“After Hitler annexed and partitioned Austria, Finland, Yugoslavia,
and Romania and invaded Poland, flushing out the British in a beach called
Dunkirk, France, defeating the French in France, he attacked Great Britain thru
a legendary air war battle because the country was separated by the English
Channel to France and then he launched an invasion of Soviet Russia called
Operation Barbarossa”.
Barbarossa started on Sunday of June 22, 1941.
That operation, according to Wikipedia,
stemmed from Nazi Germany’s ideological aims to conquer the western
Soviet Union so that it could be repopulated by Germans (Lebensraum),
to use Slavs as a slave labour force for the Axis (Germany) war
effort and to annihilate the rest according to General Plan
Ost, and to acquire the oil reserves of the Caucasus and
the agricultural resources of Soviet territories
I cited that Hitler’s strategies enmeshed him in locking horns with his
enemies the Britons, Americans, and Russians in three war fronts.
When he sent three million soldiers, many of them cracked troops in the
largest invasion of history son of a gun, to attack Kiev, Stalingrad,
Leningrad, and others in Soviet Union, he maintained 35 Divisions or more or
less half a million Wehrmacht soldiers in France afraid that the British could invade France and Germany.
Before the invasion of Soviet Union, the British with their then new technology’s radars and inferior number of combat planes frustrated the air attacks of the flamboyant German Luftwaffe (air force) chief Hermann Wilhelm Gรถring who sent 2,500 combat aircraft.
Before the invasion of Soviet Union, the British with their then new technology’s radars and inferior number of combat planes frustrated the air attacks of the flamboyant German Luftwaffe (air force) chief Hermann Wilhelm Gรถring who sent 2,500 combat aircraft.
When asked why Hitler’s military juggernaut lost the war in Operation Barbarossa,
Christopher Dowling wrote in a book compilation’s Modern Battles edited by Jon
E. Lewis I bought at the book expose’ at the World Trade Center in Pasay City, excerpt:
“Perhaps the last word
should be given to (Field –Marshal Karl Rudolf
Gerd) von Rundstedt. After the war he told a group of Russian officers that had
the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain Germany would have defeated Russia in
1941. The Russian had come to ask him which he considered to be the decisive
battle of the war, expecting him to name Stalingrad. When he replied, “The
Battle of Britain”, they closed their notebooks and went away”.
***
Another lesson I learned.
If the two governorship candidates resorted to vote buying by spending
two hundred and five hundred pesos for each of the more than a million voters,
the cash strapped Mr. Two Hundred Pesos should forego it.
“Why? I asked”
He said the two hundred pesos being spent in one of the six districts
with 324,000 average voters were useless since they could not boost the stocks
of Mr. Cash Strapped.
“How can you expect voters
in that district to vote for him when his opponent flood it with three hundred
to five hundred pesos thus outbidding him in winning the hearts and minds of
the voters”. He cited that Mr. Cash Strapped should have waited for the rival to buy
votes in the two districts and counter his P300 with P500 or his P500 with P650”.
“His two hundred pesos
sowed in four districts were ineffective instead he should have concentrated
his “guns” on the two districts and outbidding his opponent”.
Outbidding an opponent to a corrupt voter happened in some cities and
several towns in the province that saw mayors who have sterling records lose
the polls.
“In the recent election
performances were not the barometer to win the poll. What matter most was the money a candidate
offered to the voters in the last day, night, or hour before the start of the
casting of votes at the precincts,” he stressed to me.
***
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***
War is politics with bloodshed, politics is war without bloodshed - Mao Zedong
(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)
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