With the recent victory everyone should be celebrating finally a reality, the new Free Tertiary Education Bill should certainly inspire us to see how making things better for our country should be beyond partisan interests. After all, this is a law that was fought for on the streets by activists, pushed for by opposition senators, and signed into the law by the President, despite multiple advisors telling him otherwise. It is truly beautiful when we see all facets of a country, from citizens to several co-equal branches of government working together.

Unfortunately, all of this nuance and wonderful cooperation seems to have flown over the head of one Mocha Uson. We find it our responsibility to remind her how the government she is currently a part of works, beginning by pointing out…

8. The government budget is ratified by congress.

When Senator Bam Aquino happily announced that a law he has co-authored has finally been signed by the President, Mocha Uson immediately dismissed this with her insightful tweet:

Mocha Uson: truly a wordsmith.

The Problem: Not only do taxes come from us, the taxpayers, but how those taxes are put into a budget is mainly done by congress, not the president.

The main reason President Duterte’s advisers were against the law was mainly because the current budget doesn’t accommodate such a drastic change. It falls within the purview of Congress to ratify any budget proposed by the President to them, which means that in terms of where the money comes from among the three branches of government, the Legislative branch is the one responsible for it, making Mocha the “tongak” in this particular case (just like the other seven in this list, but we digress).

7. Mocha might not be familiar with the Philippine Constitution.

In talking about her conspiracy theory involving corruption and taxes (Ooohhh!!! Corruption! Such a thing of the past in 2017, right?), Mocha Uson cited the all-important Article  263 of the Constitution to illustrate her point.

Legal excellence, thine name is Mocha.

The Problem: There are only 18 articles in the Philippine Constitution.

Granted, this is obviously an honest mistake on her part, but considering she is being paid as a government official to communicate to us on behalf of the president, it should be well within our rights to demand accuracy and precision from someone being paid well by our hard-earned money.

6. She has no idea what the Vice President’s functions are.

Given her long-running feud with the Vice President and the countless times she has picked a fight with her, you would think Ms. Uson would have a great handle of exactly what it is she’s going up against in the VP.

And she would realize by now how little her target actually cares.

The Problem: The Vice President is functionally just a figurehead unless the president is absent or is asked to do something in an official capacity. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

Technically speaking, the Vice President could just sit on her hands for the rest of her term, and she would still be in fulfillment of her function, so long as the President is alive and well. Every single time Mocha insists the VP didn’t do enough, or did too much, or did something before the President did, or after the President did, are all ramblings of someone who clearly has an agenda to push. But heaven forbid we ever figure out what kind of agenda that is.

All things considered, it’s pretty amusing to see people get triggered whenever the Vice President does something like ride a bus to Bicol while praising the President for taking a commercial plane to travel (which he no longer does, by the way). Why, if we didn’t know better, we would begin to think there’s some kind of double standard going on here!

5. She has no idea what her functions were as an MTRCB Board Member and Social Media Ambassador.

For someone who was once a staunch advocate of Reproductive Health education, you would think Mocha Uson’s erstwhile appointment to the MTRCB would have provided us with a progressive and less Draconic board, but her misguided crusade against non-existent “soft porn” during her tenure would prove you wrong.

Pictured: Someone who claims to be staunchly against vulgarity, and someone who should have been the first person she took a long, hard look at before pointing any other fingers.

The Problem: In both cases, Mocha clearly doesn’t understand her mandate.

When she was a part of the MTRCB, she refused to collaborate with the other board members in pushing for her advocacy, and completely neglected her function as a “social media ambassador” for the last Metro Manila FilmFest, as she was too busy attacking the Vice President during that time to so much as watch the movies she was supposed to be promoting.

It seems that she wants all the perks and prestige that comes with being a part of government service (or “presstitutes,” considering how she jumped on having an opinion column in a newspaper the first chance she got) without actually having to fulfill the responsibilities of a government position. Surely, that’s not something Mocha Uson would do, right?

Sorta like this guy, who is hopefully not touching himself over the joy of receiving an ASEAN ID.

4. She understands her mandate as ASec even less.

As an integral part of the PCOO, it is now her job to communicate to the public on behalf of the President, and her “blog,” which is about as much as a blog as Comic Alley is a store for comics,  is inextricably part and parcel of that, no matter how much she tries to insist that her Facebook page with millions of followers and ridiculous engagement are her “private” views and unconnected to her stint as a government official. This is why she is very upset whenever people constantly call her out when she posts something clearly wrong on her page.

The Problem: She can’t have it both ways. She is either a powerful government official representing the President in some capacity, or merely an avid supporter with a “blog.”

The thing is, people call her out precisely because as part of the PCOO, the last thing she should be doing is peddling misinformation. She wants to have her cake and eat it too by having all the power of ASec, but none of the higher standards an ASec should be subjected to.

Besides, didn’t she herself claim that as part of the PCOO, she will use that very position “to fight fake news?” If so, then why is she, of all people, one of the first to peddle it? How does she even begin to fight fake news, then, if not a small chunk of it actually comes from her?

Pictured: artist’s rendition of “Mocha Uson fighting fake news.”

3. She doesn’t understand the function of the CHR.

In Mocha Uson’s wonderful world, everyone should support the President, and anyone who has something else to say is an #enemyofchange. Surely, when the President says something, it needs to happen, because that’s why he’s President, right? This goes double for the Commission on Human Rights, who has been a constant thorn in the side of the President because they keep harping on that Human Rights thing, while not lifting a finger when a citizen of this country gets killed or raped. By a drug addict, no doubt, because it all leads back to drugs, drugs, drugs.

The Problem: The CHR is specifically mandated to be a watchdog against government abuse.

If a citizen’s human rights were violated by another civilian, that’s what the police is literally there for. But if the citizen’s human rights were violated by the police, then that’s where the CHR comes in, precisely because we’ve experienced a lot of human rights violations prior to the CHR being established, and we’ve kinda had enough of it. For Mocha Uson to keep harping on the CHR for doing its job is a bit of a laugh considering she clearly has yet to do hers.

Not pictured: someone doing their job.

2. She completely forgets how a democracy works.

If Mocha had her way, she would brook no dissent and round up every single person who doesn’t support the President and his war against drugs. Every single member of the opposition is an “enemy” of progress, and the people who didn’t vote for the President should just shut up because their candidate lost.

The Problem: That’s literally the opposite of how a democracy works.

In a democracy, dissent is actually a sign of a healthy democracy, because we are allowed to check and balance our government from being too powerful just because they’re popular. Democracy isn’t a tyranny of the majority, contrary to what we might think, and any attempts to silence opposition is not only dangerous, but downright unconstitutional.

It appears Ms. Mocha is conflating dissent with treason, which explains why she has so much disdain for cabinet officials who don’t kowtow to every single thing the President stands for. But even with standards as ruthless as that, we find a problem because…

1. Mocha herself is capable of dissent against the president.

Ms. Uson believes that the President can do no wrong, as is her right to hold an opinion She believes that anyone who believes otherwise should be thrown to the dogs and left in the lurch, because anything less than absolute, unquestioning loyalty would result in an unforgivable setback in the march for change set by our beloved President.

We should be wearing these, because we’re fatigued, not them.

The Problem: Whenever Mocha criticizes the LTFRB over the Grab-Uber issue, she is questioning the president’s “perfection.”

If the President can do no wrong, then surely, the fact that his appointed LTFRB head is still in place means that he believes his LTFRB is still doing right by him. The more Mocha keeps criticizing the LTFRB, the more she reveals that given the right issue and enough populist support, she can throw even “Tatay Digong” under the bus.

It’s pretty great to see that someone like Mocha could be living the dream, making a 6-figure salary paid for by our taxes, but as one of the people paying her salary, it seems appropriate for me to say that she sucks at this job a whole lot more than she did at her previous ones.

What is your opinion of Mocha? Share them with us below!