The head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines advised Catholic voters not to vote liars in the upcoming elections.
“The campaign period is a good time to see the different forms of lying,” said CBCP president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas. “Beware of liars. Lying is a devil with many faces. Be wise. Watch out. Do not vote for liars.”
Villegas said candidates may employ different kinds of lies in their campaign for public office and these include exaggerating qualities or actions to gain favor, making excuses for previous failures, hearsay and contrived flattery.
“When it is obviously exaggerated in order to gain undue favor of voters, or win favor with another in personal relations or in politics,” Villegas said.
The archbishop said even silence is one of the more serious lies. “Even subtle silence can be a lie when it is the coward’s ‘refuge’ to avoid trouble or to support something known to be wrong,” Villegas added.
The prelate also said black propaganda is also a more serious lie meant to intentionally deceive and leads others into error, spread “half-truths” by which the truth is twisted or slanted to gain more favor and votes.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Lying is the intentional misrepresentation of the truth,” Villegas wrote as title of his statement.
“As it is our Christian duty to respect those in authority, so it is a duty too for our government officials to act and talk and live honorably,” he said.
Villegas added that the next president must “excel in professionalism and service, to be excellent in character and competence, to be excellent role models for the youth and to be the prime example for all public servants.”
Villegas issued the amid a controversy on a campaign comic book that portrayed the alleged heroism of Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II during the onslaught of a killer Typhoon Yolanda in November 2013.
Shortly after the alleged “malicious and fictitious” comic book, the LP also release a video where he and Department of Defense secretary Voltaire Gazmin were allegedly leading the guests of Leyte park hotel to safer areas.
On Thursday, Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez denounced the comic book describing them as “malicious and fictitious”.
“I am upset. Taclobanons are so upset because they saw me doing the rounds, busy evacuating people the night I was portrayed as partying, and a barangay chairman, who I woke up after the command conference, thanked me after the storm because had I not forced him to evacuate and had he not heeded, he and his daughter would have perished because their house was washed away,” Romualdez said.
Reacting to the Roxas comic book, Romualdez offered to set the record straight with a detailed account of what happened the day Yolanda struck, and how these events showed that the national government went to Tacloban unprepared.
Romualdez said Roxas and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin knew he was at the command conference, which the two Cabinet members co-presided, at the Philippine National Police regional headquarters that started at 8 p.m. on the eve of Yolanda’s onslaught.
Romualdez said he even apologized to Roxas and Gazmin for arriving 20 minutes late because he had to attend to a fire that gutted a residence in downtown Tacloban City.
After the command conference, Romualdez said he did the rounds of the coastal barangays to evacuate people and stopped at midnight while Roxas and Gazmin proceeded to check in at the Leyte Park Hotel after the conference at 10 p.m.
“I don’t drink, neither do I party. The comic book was very malicious. My life is very transparent. Everybody saw me the night before the storm and days after the storm,” the mayor said.
Romualdez hit back at Roxas, who thanked his supporters for coming out with the 28-page comic book that portrayed him as a hero and savior during Yolanda.