by Lito Banayo
from MALAYA
In reacting to news reports on TV and columns which brought out documentary evidence to disprove the faked poverty claims he made in his political ads, Manny Villar wants Noynoy, the Liberal Party, and us columnists to apologize.
He angrily lashed back at critics (that’s Winnie Monsod and Conrad de Quiros of PDI, Billy Esposo of the Star, and this writer, as of the time Villar responded) for allegedly “distorting facts surrounding the death of his younger brother Danny”.
What were the “distortions”, Senator Money?
“During an emergency case, you go to the nearest hospital and bother later where to get the money to pay the bill”, after stating that Danny was admitted into the “charity ward” of FEU Hospital.
Laki ako sa Maynila, Senator Money. The nearest hospitals to your North Balut digs were: Sta. Rita Hospital in Gagalangin, owned by the Albanos, Emmanuel Hospital, a Protestant-owned and run hospital in Jose Abad Santos (then Reina Regente) in Tondo, or Mary Johnston (also with a charity ward, and where Joseph Estrada was born, fronting the parochial school young Manny attended since Grade One), and even San Lazaro Hospital (a government-owned free hospital near the corner of Tayuman and Avenida Rizal). These are nearer to Balut or Navotas than FEU Hospital. And all these were far cheaper than FEU. There is another hospital nearer, UST Hospital, which costs about the same as FEU.
If Danny was a leukemia patient long before either chemo-therapy or bone marrow transplant were developed by medical science, the doctors at FEU would have told the parents of one in the charity ward that it was time to go home and prepare for the inevitable. Thirteen days at FEU must have cost a pretty penny, as I said in a GMA-7 interview on Holy Monday. Assuming Danny was kept in the charity ward, the doctors would likely have told the Villars it was better to bring their son home. At the back of their minds, the bed could be given to an indigent patient who could yet be cured or treated.
But Villar said his family could not afford the cost of Danny’s treatment. This he even enshrined in costly TV advertorials, “mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang perang pampagamot”. The truth is, may pera ka man o wala, hindi pa kayang gamutin noon ang leukemia, and surely the doctors would have told Manny and Danny’s parents so, especially “kung wala (silang) perang pampagamot”.
So our question remains — why foist a lie upon the public? Why use your dead brother as fodder for your propaganda? Is this not an insult to your industrious mother, and a desecration of your brother’s death, as much as a mockery of your deceased father’s efforts to give you and your siblings a better life?
“Some groups have the gall of spinning tales that I did not come from the poor. I’ll never get tired of saying we were once squatters. My siblings and I were born in (Moriones) Sta. Maria in Tondo. The nine of us slept together on a single mat and mosquito net,” he pointed out.
“Squatters”, Mr. Senator? Your parents rented that small house in Moriones. They did not “squat” upon it, like those in Intramuros who Mayor Arsenio Lacson bundled up and moved to Sapang Palay in San Jose del Monte, close to the lands you pawned to the Bangko Sentral. So cut the crap, please.
“My father was forced to borrow money and build our own home. Now they’re saying we are not poor…” he said. No sir, we did not say you were never poor. Maybe you were. But the truth is your parents sacrificed a lot, and worked hard to give you and your siblings a better life. The truth is, even before your brother Danny died, even when you entered school, you were already much better off. Your father, Manuel Sr. was a budget officer of DANR, later divided in two, and he became part of the DENR, eventually becoming the confidante and financial officer of then DENR Minister Jose Leido Jr. Pretty well-placed and cushy, indeed.
Which is why we cannot understand why you had to fake the circumstances of Danny’s unfortunate illness and eventual demise and therein lie to the people.
Your father did obtain a loan from the GSIS, for 16,000 pesos to build the house, which was not a small amount in those days. He bought a 560-square meter lot in San Rafael which at the time, cost 30 pesos per square meter, or 16.800. Who were your neighbours? Well, the following big names in Philippine industry lived in that vicinity: the late Yao Eng Hue, once president of the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, at the time owner of Manhattan Rubber, which produced rubber slippers; Robin Sy, also a former president of FFCCCI; Dante Go, who used to own Sugarland and sold it in 1999 to Ramon Ang for a cool billion; even the family of Wilson and William Tieng of Solar Films and Solar TV. Their father was one of the biggest glassware and kitchen equipment dealer in Echague, Quiapo, in league with the late Leonardo Ty of Hitachi and Aji-no-moto. Even William Gatchalian had property in the vicinity. My own grand-uncle used to have a clothing factory nearby, called La Navotena at the foot of the bridge along North Balut. The area is beside what is now Westminster High School, a Chinese-Filipino school. Just so the young will understand how big an amount 16,800 pesos was (30 x 560 sq. m.), the minimum wage at the time was only 120 pesos per month, or 4 pesos per day.
Villar also said that the subdivision they lived in was beside Smoky Mountain, and the stench assailed their nostrils. Again that is a lie. Because there was no Smoky Mountain at the time (the 60’s). It was only in the 80’s when population pressures, inward migration and grinding poverty made foraging the city’s detritus become the anomaly that it was. San Rafael subdivision is close, but not adjacent to the area used as a mountain of dump, which Tita Cory and later FVR converted into tenement housing for real squatters, developed by Reghis Romero, now one of Villar’s and GMA’s most ardent supporters. Young Manny did not smell the stench of garbage, but the smell of soap produced by Procter and Gamble PMC at the back of San Rafael.
You want the Liberals and your main political opponent to “apologize” for what they did to your reputation. Firstly, it was neither the Liberals nor Noynoy who told the truth surrounding the death of your brother which you yourself brought to public attention through expensive advertisements. It was the collective work of columnists whose responsibility it is to tell the truth, and shared their information with each other, especially since it concerns someone who wants to be president of this benighted land. Whether truth hurts you or not is of no moment to those among us who have a duty to search incisively into the character of all who seek the highest office within the gift of the sovereign people.
Your own propagandists, aided by the communists, are trying their worst to pin even the Mendiola massacre and the suspicious killings at the gate of Luisita to your main protagonist, as if he himself bloodied his hands, as if he himself ordered the shootings, even if police findings showed that some died at the hands of communist agitators who wanted precisely to blow up a labor problem into a political issue to further their cause. You and the agit-prop experts you have purchased with your indecent money are the ones who foist lies against your opponent. And now you have the effrontery to ask him, or us, to apologize?
No, Mr. Villar, este Villarroyo, it is not for anyone else to apologize for telling the truth about the baseness of your character. Rather, it is you who must apologize, firstly to your old mother whose industry and sacrifice you belittled by making it appear that she and your father were helpless in providing you with a better life, and only you, through your “sipag at tiyaga”, triumphed over the poverty of your birth.
And then, apologize to the people, especially the poor to whom you have lied, and egregiously so. Apologize to those little children whom you have exploited in your propaganda, singing an anthem dedicated to a bogus poor. Apologize to the desperate Dumagats of Norzagaray whose ancestral lands your bankrupt bank hocked to the Bangko Sentral, which in turn foreclosed their lands and their future. Apologize to the urban settlers of San Pedro, and to the family of Quirico de los Santos, whose life was taken by your security guards when you or your assigns ordered the demolition of their shanties standing over land that was under the custodianship of the PCGG, over which you have no valid title. Apologize to the many landowners whose ingress and egress over their titled lands you closed so that they would be forced to sell their lands to you. And once again, apologize to the public who you fool with your ads proclaiming your “opposition” to a hated regime which now turns out to be your chief sponsor to succeed its misrule and its corrupt governance.
* * *
Today by the way is the 32nd anniversary of what political history has enshrined as “The April 6 Noise Barrage”, when citizens of Metro Manila dared to line up the streets, banging pots and pans, while vehicles private and public blared their horns to protest what was increasingly seen as the sham elections for the Interim Batasang Pambansa of 1978. The following morning was the day when elections were held, and wonder of wonders, the entire 21-man slate of the dictator’s KBL led by his wife Imelda, with several complete unknowns in the list, “won” over the Laban ticket, led by the imprisoned Ninoy Aquino.
The April 6 noise barrage presaged the demonstrations that erupted after Ninoy, coming home from exile in Boston, was mercilessly shot down in the tarmac of the international airport under heavy military escort. Years later, in 1986, a Tagumpay ng Bayan proclaimed Cory Aquino the real winner against the fraudulently-proclaimed Ferdinand Marcos. Days after, people power in Edsa followed a military mutiny at the military camps.
These days, with a Manny Villar-Gloria Arroyo deal redolent in the air, backed up by precursors Chavit Singson (we wrote about his expected switch a month ago), Winston Garcia and his clan (we wrote about the fateful meeting between the GSIS chief and his boss Mike where the signal was given), Erico Aumentado of Bohol and Joe Zubiri of Bukidnon, on top of midnight appointments all over and a Comelec clueless about what Smartmatic is cooking up, I get a feeling of déjà vu. People power may indeed be necessary once more, the better to drive the message that it is the people, and truly the people, who are sovereign in this land so benighted by the greedy and insatiable.
(banayo_at@yahoo.com)
(atbanayo.blogspot.com)
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