“How dare you say that my father has singlehandedly defaced the memory of the Edsa revolution?”
Presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio hit back at Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) President Archbishop Socrates Villegas for criticizing President Rodrigo Duterte in a letter to the late Jaime Cardinal Sin.
In his letter, Villegas decried the “rape” of Edsa and how history has been rewritten
“The dictator ousted by people power is now buried among heroes. The lady of 1,200 pairs of shoes is now a representative in Congress. History books are rewritten. Historical memory is revised. The hero is now a villain. The plunderers are now heroes,” Villegas said.
Duterte earlier favored the burial of former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
The archbishop slammed Duterte’s brutal was on drugs, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of suspected drug addicts. He said “the bloodless revolt now stained by the blood in our streets and street gutters.”
“Now eight months of relentless killings of the poor in the name of ‘change’! It is a nightmare, Your Eminence! It is a shame,” he said.
Sara hit back at Villegas, saying the country’s problems did not start when his father won the presidency.
“Since 1986 and until seven months ago, I remember that our nation has been hounded by corruption, crime, territorial war of gangs and drug lords, extrajudicial killings, narco politics, terrorism, protracted rebellion, abuse of power in government, political bickering and the entry of foreign mafias,” she said.
“It surely did not start when President Duterte took office. He won the presidency precisely because you ignored what was wrong with this world,” she added.
The younger Duterte said Villegas’ desire was “put into power a leader who walks and talks like you–someone who is definitely not Rodrigo Duterte.”
“When your friend failed as a President, I cannot remember you calling it the rape of Edsa. You just swept it under your glitzy rugs and you moved on, back to business–back to acting as if you can save us all from hell,” Sara said.
“Your group is sadly a bunch of delusional hypocrites. While all of you were up there riding high on your horses, you failed to notice that many of us down here empathize with what Rodrigo Duterte is saying because it is the hard truth. It is truly without the air of hypocrisy that we smell from your kind,” she added.
She blasted the archbishop whom she said could not accept what happened after the Edsa revolution.
“How dare you call us pimps of the Edsa spirit and yet it is you who cannot accept what has happened to our country since 1986,” she said. “How dare you say that we are trying to prostitute the meaning of Edsa.”
Sara recalled how his father woke up on the eve of February 25, 1986 after the Filipinos ousted the late dictator from power.
“While we were huddled in the car, he told us, ‘Timan-i ninyo ning gabhiona ni. Ayaw ninyo kalimti [Remember this night. Do not forget this night],'” she said.
Her father, she said, brought them to the San Pedro Church as crowds celebrated the triumph of the people’s revolution.
“My father perfectly understood what the spirit of Edsa is, otherwise, he would not have told me to never forget that night of 31 years ago. And I now believe that he understands it better than you do,” she said.
“You preach about freedom as if you invented it, as if it is your gift to us. Let me tell you what freedom is. It is to live a life that is free from your selective moral standard. This is what the meaning of Edsa is,” she added.
She said Villegas was worse than Duterte.
“But you are truly, madly, deeply worse than a hundred President Dutertes,” she said.
Sara lamented why the Edsa People Power revolution “has become the standard definition of freedom for our country.”
“I find it hard to understand why this bloodless revolution has become the standard definition of freedom for our country and this standard is forced down our throats by a certain group of individuals who think they are better than everyone else. These are the elite and their friends, including Archbishop Villegas,” she said. CDG/rga
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