By Jonathan A. Santes, Madel S. Namit, Mario B. Casayuran, and Charissa M. Luci
The brains behind the ongoing demolition job against front-running presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is Malacañang, his camp said yesterday.
“Senator Antonio Trillanes is just a pawn and President Benigno Aquino III is orchestrating a last-ditch demolition job against presidential bet Mayor Rodrigo Duterte,” Leoncio Evasco Jr., Duterte’s campaign manager, said. “All along, Malacañang is behind the sinister attacks against our candidate.”
“The brains behind is Malacañang,” Evasco stressed Saturday, nine days before the elections.
“The Aquino administration is bent on thwarting a victory by Duterte. It is desperately trying to save Mar Roxas’s candidacy and is poised to employ all means, including massive cheating, to maintain the status quo,” Evasco explained.
“They’re making the election a very dirty political exercise. They want it confined among the elite. They cannot stomach an outsider, one who has captivated the imagination of the people but does not come from their ranks,” the former rebel priest added.
PALACE DENIAL
Last Friday, Malacañang denied it is behind Trillanes’ exposé on Duterte’s alleged P211-million bank account which was undeclared in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN).
“Walang katotohanan ang alegasyon (There is no truth to that allegation,” said Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr.
President Aquino had earlier expressed concerned about the possible return of martial law democracy if Duterte and Senator Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. would win the top two government posts in the May elections. Should this happened, Aquino said he is ready to defend the country’s democracy even at the cost of his life.
The President earlier expressed concern about the threats to democracy if Duterte and Senator Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. would win the top two government posts in the May elections. Aquino, in his visit to Cebu last Wednesday, said he would fight against any abuses in the next administration even at the cost of his life.
Aquino had also said the country may suffer anew the ills of dictatorship if Filipinos vote for a bully in next month’s presidential elections, apparently referring to the tough-talking Duterte who has vowed to close Congress if there is an attempt to impeach him should he win the May 9 presidential elections.
VINDICATED
Yesterday, Trillanes said he feels vindicated over reports that Duterte has admitted having P200 million in bank accounts.
“I feel vindicated by Duterte’s admission that he has P200 million in his accounts,” Trillanes said in a text message to Senate reporters, stressing that the mayor’s admission shattered his image of being simple, honest, and incorruptible.
Trillanes said Duterte and his daughter, Sarah, had P2.4 billion in several bank accounts in Metro Manila and in Davao from 2006 to 2015.
Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO) Undersecretary Manuel Quezon III said Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged undeclared bank accounts should be looked into with seriousness as it called on the presidential bet to be consistent with his statements.
Quezon said hidden wealth is a serious allegation that should be answered with consistency.
He said it is important for all public officials to have public trust.
“All government officials, in a sense, have an obligation that you cannot base on technicality. Protection given to an ordinary citizen when it comes to bank accounts cannot be given to a public official because public office is a public trust,” Quezon said.
“Allegations involving money should be seriously looked into,” he said.
The Palace official also noted the inconsistencies of the Duterte camp in their statements regarding the issue.
“This is something that the brave Mayor Duterte should face,” Quezon said, noting that Duterte is not only facing issues on his bank account but on his alleged properties as well.
GRACE’S CHALLENGE
Presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe challenged Duterte to open his bank accounts to truthfully shed light on allegations of hidden wealth.
“For his own sake, it is better for him to open his bank accounts. If he does not own those accounts, he should open them, it will be more beneficial to him,” she told reporters during a campaign sortie in Binangonan, Rizal.
As a candidate running for the highest office in the land, Duterte should be gracious and truthful enough in explaining his accounts in three banks involving up P2.4 billion, Poe said.
Poe’s running mate, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero also insisted that Duterte should answer all the allegations against him.
“I believe that if there are questions, they should be answered, whether you are running as a candidate or not,” Escudero said.
Poe said she remains unperturbed by her survey ratings, saying she “won’t give up” the fight.
Duterte has already agreed to open his bank accounts, authorizing his lawyer Salvador Panelo to meet with Trillanes.
Panelo, was scheduled to go with Trillanes to the bank branch in Ortigas, Pasig, tomorrow to show that Duterte’s bank accounts only had P50,000.
But Trillanes said he wanted a nine-year transaction history to be scrutinized.
BLACK PROPAGANDA EXPECTED
Evasco said they have been expecting this (the black propaganda) to become more vicious and intense as Duterte’s ranking began rising in the surveys.
On Friday, Pulse Asia released the result of its April 19-24 survey on voter preference, showing Duterte keeping a tight grip on the lead in the voter preference at 33 percent, 11 percentage points ahead of Senator Grace Poe who has 22 percent.
Administration candidate Mar Roxas, Aquino’s anointed candidate, is in third place with 20 percent, followed by United Nationalist Alliance standard-bearer Vice President Jejomar C. Binay.
“Aquino and Roxas both belong to the landed elite who only have contempt against the majority of Filipinos clamoring for genuine and real change,” Evasco said.
One does not have to go beyond and behind recent history, he added.
“During the watch of PNoy and Roxas, we saw how they remorselessly sacrificed the lives of our gallant police officers in Mamasapano (Maguindanao),” Evasco said.
“When hungry farmers demanded rice because the severe drought is killing their children, they answered back by firing at the protesters and in the process killing three and wounding scores of others. It was an exercise of brutal state of euthanasia,” he exclaimed.
The Duterte strategist said “for the first time, people have rallied behind a man – a leader – who is giving them hope.”
This, he added, is bringing “fear into the senses of the Aquino government and their minions.”
That is the reason they unleashed Trillanes who he called as a failed putschist and a reckless mercenary of the Aquino government.
BISHOPS’ CALL
Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said that while the desire of the people for change is understandable, this cannot take the form of supporting a candidate whose speech and actions, plans and projects show scant regard for the rights of all, and who has openly declared indifference if not dislike and disregard for the Church, especially her moral teachings.
“A choice for a candidate who takes positions that are not only politically precarious but worse, morally reprehensible, cannot and should not be made by the Catholic faithful and those who take their allegiance to Christ and his Kingship seriously,” CBCP president Lingayen Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement titled “Prophets of Truth, Servants of Unity” for May 1.
“One cannot proclaim Christ as King and at the same time accept the governance of one whose thoughts, speech, and demeanor are diametrically opposed to the demands of submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” he added.
The Catholic Church, Villegas said has never asked any political candidate to seek its endorsement, but it has always demanded of Catholic voters that they cast their votes as an act not only of citizenship but also as a “public declaration of faith.”
“We ask this most earnestly of all of you, Catholic brothers and sisters, in the forthcoming elections,” Villegas said.
The prelate said the nationally telecast debates, the publicized utterances and actuations of the candidates, particularly those who vie for the presidency, have given everyone a glimpse of “who they are, what they represent and the causes them champion or reject.”
ALLOW INFORMED CHOICE
In the same statement, the CBCP head also issued an appeal to candidates to “allow each Filipino the free and untrammeled right to an informed choice.”
“This means, among other things, that you cannot deceive or mislead the people by proffering them falsehoods, much less defraud the nation,” said Villegas.
“As we advise our voters, so we also say to you dear candidates: Pray! Pray not only to win but pray that the Lord may show you by his signs His chosen leader for this nation, this nation who calls on Him at the crossroads if its national life,” he added. When the elections are over and the winners proclaimed, Villegas begged everyone to be instruments of peace, reconciliation, and healing.
“Whoever wins honestly, whoever takes the oath of his or her office seriously, whoever strives to heal the wounds of the divisiveness of politics, whoever respects the rights of all and is earnets in his or her fear of God and is zealous for his precepts has the support of the CBCP, and we will do everything together with our priests so that all our people, to the remotest barangays to which we minister, may rally around a just and God-fearing government that visits no vengeance on foes but is characterized by mercy and compassion for all, not only for allies!” he said.
Villegas also encouraged everyone to pray the rosary every day and receive Holy Communion starting May 1 until May 9, Election Day for a godly electoral process. (With a report from Leslie Ann G. Aquino)