Columnists, Partisans and Conflicts of Interest
Initially, however, the rest of the media ignored Esposo’s expose. It was the C-5 road extension project controversy that was hounding Villar, with several commentaries and special news reports over both broadcast and print alleging that the extension project had been modified mostly through his efforts and for his financial benefit (see “Rerouted: Manny’s C-5 problems,” PJR Reports, Jan-Feb 2010).
The was-he-or-wasn’t-he-poor issue could have died right there, were it not for a Villar TV ad in early March in which Villar claimed that his brother Danny had died in 1962 without medical treatment. Apparently Villar’s plaintive “Nakaranas na ba kayong mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang pera pampagamot? (Have you ever experienced losing a brother because you cannot afford medical care?)” was enough to resurrect the issue, first for an anonymous e-mail sender, and later, other columnists and reporters.
Two anonymously sourced documents began to circulate through e-mail in mid-March: one was a copy of Danny Villar’s death certificate and the other, the land transfer certificate on the Villars’ home in Moriones, Tondo. In a follow-up column on Mar. 28, Esposo alleged that the documents proved that Villar was lying about both his brother’s death and his family’s financial status.
Philippine Daily Inquirer columnists Solita Monsod (who had earlier written about how Villar allegedly benefited from the C-5 extension project), Conrado de Quiros, and Manuel Quezon III, as well as Malaya/Business Insight columnist Lito Banayo, went on to dismiss Villar’s I-was-really-poor story as a lie.
Taking off from Esposo, De Quiros hit Villar for the discrepancy between his claims and what the two documents said (“Still, mahirap” Inquirer, Mar. 29; and “And still, mahirap”, Mar. 31). Monsod, meanwhile, assailed Villar’s character (“Awesome claims” the Inquirer, March 27). Monsod said Villar’s claim that his brother died because their family had no money to seek medical care, which contradicted the details in his death certificate, raised questions about his integrity.
[…] Columnists, Partisans, and Conflicts of Interest by Luis V. Teodoro with research by Rupert Francis Mangilit and John Reiner Antiquerra […]
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