Butch Bagabuyo “A liar is not believed even though he tells the truth.” – Cicero “A good memory is needed once we have lied.” – Corneille LAST Sunday’s un-event was a symposium and not a debate. A symposium is a meeting convened for a discussion of some subject at which several speakers discuss a topic before an audience. On the other hand, a debate is a formal contest in which the affirmative and the negative sides of an issue are argued for by opposing speakers. Undoubtedly, therefore, what transpired at the Capitol University last 21st of February was a symposium and definitely not a debate. In that symposium mistakenly called a debate by both the GMA, a giant national TV and radio network, and the Comelec debilitating greed was exposed to the dismay of the Filipino people who eagerly watched the affair hoping in vain to witness the coming of a real and meaningful change in our country made poorer for centuries by the filthy rich and the trapos in our government. Without a doubt, the symposium succeeded only in exposing the bad and the ugly rather than the good, thus:
  • Avarice was at its worst. Those who were privileged to watch the event live may not have realized that the one and only reason why the organizers of the affair shamelessly shortened the time afforded the speakers, not debaters, was clearly the ugly and unconscionable act of making a huge profit at the expense of the people and on the pretext of public service.
  • Without fear of contradiction, any person of average understanding would definitely frown on, if not despise, having advertisements during a debate, actually the symposium. And, what was glaringly unconscionable was the fact that the Comelec allowed it. And, unwittingly, if not, ironically, the Comelec chair called the affair a historic event. But the undeniable truth is that to the millions who watched the symposium in their respective TVs, radios and the Internet, the un-event last Sunday was a nauseating display of the Comelec’s arrogant ignorance of its solemn duty to our country and people. It was arrogance at its worst because both the Comelec as well as the GMA TV arrogated to themselves the right of the people to know what the “presidentiables” stand for. And, definitely, Comelec displayed their ignorance of their solemn duty to be fair, credible, honest and transparent on matters affecting elections. Certainly, choosing a venue most friendly to Mar Roxas was unpalatable to the people who know that Roxas slept in the residence of the owners of the Capitol University in most if not, all instances were he stayed overnight in the City of Cagayan de Oro.
  • Further, how come the affair was done in English? Has the Comelec as well as GMA network forgotten that we have our own national language, even if it is still evolving? And don’t they know that a person’s own dialect is the sweetest and most pleasing sound there is? Can they be that naïve if not, callous?
Besides, don’t Comelec and GMA TV know that the so-called debate (symposium) was designed to make our people know and understand what’s in the heads of our “presidentiables”? Despite the highly controversial decision by the Supreme Court that the so-called Edca (Enhanced Defense Coordinating Agreement) is constitutional, our country has remained to this day, at least on paper, independent and a sovereign state, and not a colony, a protectorate or even a puppet of the US.
  • To the teeming millions of Filipinos who have watched with awe the presidential debates in the US, they have learned that the “presidentiables” there can never afford to commit lies simply because their giant TV networks make sure, as always, that their panels of interrogators come well prepared for the occasion. Candidly, lies have no place in any debate for the simple reason that the giant TV networks there have the capability and the will of exposing lies either by instant playbacks or the panel of political experts commenting the outcome of the debate right there and then.
  • Certainly, a political advertisement during any presidential symposium is big no-no. What is sad and lamentable is that GMA has celebrated only recently the holding of a teleserye, “Juan for All,” in a huge arena, touted as the biggest of its kind in the world, and without any interruption by any TV advertisement. Are we made to understand and believe that as far as the executives of the GMA TV and radio network, that teleserye is more compelling than their social responsibility to the teeming millions of the poor Pinoys who are their real money-makers?
Wa mo kyapi?
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“Show   me a liar, and I will show thee a thief.”--Herbert In the rally at the Divisoria organized by the Barog Pederal Movement in cooperation with the other volunteers for the Duterte-Cayetano Team, vice presidential candidate Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano gave his listeners his unequaled brilliance and wit as compared to the other “vice presidentiables.” Mr. Cayetano exposed to the delight of his supporters the lies of “presidentiables” in that symposium. He said Vice President Binay unwittingly showed he is a liar unworthy of the presidency because in answer to the query by feisty yet ailing Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Binay boasted that he acquired most of his present fortunes not from thievery but from the inheritance, and yet Mr. Binay repeatedly aired, to this day,  on highly paid ads on tri-media that he came from a poorer than poor parents who died when he was still very young to make a living, because of utter lack of money to buy medicines for his very poor parents. ‘And to prove to his listeners that Cayetano is deserving of their trust and confidence  to be elected as vice president of “Super Digong” Duterte, Cayetano unmasked the glaring incompetence of Mar Roxas. The latter claimed that he stayed 16 days and nights in Tacloban after powerful typhoon Yolanda razed Tacloban City to the ground. But despite the millions of dollars in donation Tacloban remained wanting to this day, courtesy of Mr. Mar Roxas’s gross incompetence in governance... Duterte-Cayetano pa more! Tsada, di ba?