Why do we let these fraudsters fool us?

The paid propaganda fraudsters are at it again, trying to hijack the 2016 presidential nominating process. This process used to be the business of accredited political parties, which held national conventions to nominate official candidates in any election. We copied this practice from the United States, which continues to pick its presidential candidates through its party nominating conventions. But we have long abandoned the practice and replaced it with something completely ignoble.

The last time we had something mildly respectable was in 1986 when the National Unification Committee, chaired by the late former Sen. Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo, chose Cory Aquino to run against President Ferdinand Marcos in the snap presidential elections. Since then, in the phenomenon now imitated in Africa as the “Filipinization of national politics,” our presidential candidates are all self-nominated.