Did a former congressman deliberately lie to us?
On the first day former Representative Raul V. del Mar, Cebu City North District, came up with a paid political advertisement on a local daily, he listed as among his achievements, his principal authorship of a so-called Magna Carta for the Poor. I was so thoroughly impressed that I, in my lonesome, clapped my hands. At least, beyond motherhood statements about helping the less privileged members of society, a Cebuano lawmaker had finally taken up their cudgels beyond what was otherwise empty rhetoric.
In an earlier article I wrote, I said that politicians, in general terms, always played around the living conditions of our poor brothers, especially during the campaign period. I even suggested a reason why they, then, did so, and why, as if promoting a practice, they continue to do so by pointing out to the fact that on election days, more men and women with manifestation of living in the less privileged echelons are seen on the longer queue lines than those with outward appearance of opulence.
The publication of ex-congressman del Mar's sponsorship of the code for the poor proved me wrong. He was after all, a man on whose shoulder's those living below the poverty line could very well depend on to champion their cause.
But, my euphoria did not last long. Before I could put down the newspaper to tell my friends how grateful I was for the reported herculean effort of the Cebu legislator, a news story written on another page told me there was a terrible mistake I was about to commit. Had I started calling friends about my happy findings, I could have also been guilty of spreading wrong information.
In the very same newspaper where the Cebu City North district congressman published his being the author of the legislative measure, he was portrayed as a barefaced liar or, at best, a purveyor of false information. I could hardly believe what I read. The text of the news report did not make the lawmaker a liar. It just reported that there was no such law which the Cebu solon bragged as having sponsored.
The same news medium reported the veto power used by His Excellency, President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III on a Magna Carta for the Poor. In other words, the Magna Carta that was passed by the Philippine Congress did not become a law. The president vetoed it. It did not meet the approval of the executive because, as reported, it was flawed. Its author did not understand how measures of such nature work.
The report of the presidential veto brought me face to face with some disturbing scenario. First. Why did the Cebu's former north district congressman place it in his advertisement that he authored the law, as if it became one? Was he not guilty of telling a false propaganda? Why should he claim to be principal sponsor of a law when in fact, what he might have advocated in Congress debates did not become a law?
This brings me back to my old line. Politicians play with the emotions of the poor. By telling our impoverished brothers that he authored a law to benefit them, he tried to mislead them, actually. How could he make such a claim when his measure did not become law? His projection of having pushed for their benefit by crafting his “law†cannot be removed from the characterization of false propaganda and so this propagandist could be considered a false one.
Still, another part of the news report aggravated the situation. The story attributed the authorship to the lady representative of the north district. They happened to have the same family name because the lady is the daughter of the propagandist. As it unraveled, the former congressman claimed to have authored a “law†which in fact he did not.
Really, had the veto by the president not been reported, the poor ones in our community could have been misled into thinking that our congressman was finally doing what he should have accomplished in the twenty years of being in power.
***
Email: [email protected]
- Latest
