Columnists, Partisans and Conflicts of Interest
Not really poor
At the height of the campaign for both the national and local elections in March and April this year, Villar’s claim that his family was poor—the cornerstone of his campaign—was challenged by the press, notably by some columnists. Meanwhile, Aquino’s capacity to lead the country was the question implicit in media reports about his alleged psychological problems.
Villar was riding high in the surveys in early February, his ratings rising enough to threaten Aquino III’s early (and phenomenal) lead. Villar’s high ratings were presumably due to the legions of the poor’s being convinced that the former Senate president had indeed been of sufficiently humble origins to understand and sympathize with the poorest Filipinos– and that, as a result, he would indeed deliver on his promise to eradicate poverty.
Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr. and his running mate Loren Legarda (photo by Lito Ocampo)
But in his column in The Philippine Star (“ Was Manny Villar really ever poor?”), William Esposo questioned Villar’s claim that his family was dirt poor, initially using as basis a letter from someone who claimed to be Villar’s neighbor in Tondo, in which the neighbor saidVillar’s family used to have an “owner-type” jeep, which is not something a really poor family could afford. Esposo also reviewed Villar’s online biography, which listed the private, and therefore expensive, schools he had attended.
[…] Columnists, Partisans, and Conflicts of Interest by Luis V. Teodoro with research by Rupert Francis Mangilit and John Reiner Antiquerra […]
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