Catanduanes Forum

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 20:24:00 04/27/2010

MOTHERS
Filed Under: Elections, Politics, Women

WITH MOTHER’S DAY FAST APPROACHING (ON May 9, a sad post-1986 deviation from the Filipino tradition of observing it in December), it may be coincidence or political cunning in certain quarters to have the mothers
of presidential candidates in the news.

Sen. Manuel Villar’s mother, Curita, spoke heartrendingly the other day about the pain she felt over the attacks on her son, and the pain she felt he was experiencing. It is important, we believe, to consider what she said and did not say. She did not address the specific criticisms aimed at her son, particularly over whether or not he willfully exaggerated his family’s material standing during his youth. She did say she and her husband had been poor and that she had endured rough treatment when she was starting out. And she bristled at her son having to endure people thumbing their noses at her son in the same way that they had mocked her when she was fresh in the business.

The point isn’t the Villar matriarch’s decision to go before the media, it’s the circumstances demeaning her appearance that concerns us here. Villar’s sisters said they were surprised that reporters showed up at their mother’s residence, but it was Villar’s staff that advised reporters to go there. In the end the press appearance had to be cut short due to concerns about their mother’s blood pressure, which leads us to ask why they put her through the ordeal in the first place.

One of Villar’s sisters snapped at a reporter who asked if their mother wasn’t being used for political purposes, “Who was the first to do it?” She pointed out that another candidate even had his parents on his posters.

Again, this was an expression of personal outrage and as such, beyond public comment, but it does ignore one essential fact: In a society that puts mothers on a pedestal, we cannot think of any candidate who hasn’t invoked the example of his or her mother at one point or another in the campaign.

Sen. Benigno Aquino III has his mother front and center in his campaign, in no small part because he attributes his decision to run on the public expectations that fell on his shoulders with her passing. Former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada was famously devoted to his mother when she was still alive, but unlike the candidate who has become his nemesis in this campaign, his approach was more old-school and in keeping with his origins in San Juan’s gentry: he always tried to shield “Doña Mary” from bad news about himself.

Sen. Richard Gordon publicly invoked in at least one debate the example of his mother, whom he praised for insisting on being confined at the Philippine General Hospital during her last illness, because, as he told it, she wanted to die where the poor she’d always served died.

Similar expressions of maternal appreciation and devotion can be found in every single one of those seeking the presidency now and in the past. And so we cannot avoid taking exception to Villar’s hand in the matter of his mother, literally shoving her front and center before an eager press.

Howie Severino’s scrupulously-researched inquiry into the material circumstances of the Villars points to an upwardly-mobile, solidly middle-class family of increasing prosperity, one family that could take pride in the improvement of its standard of living. But such an achievement has been diminished by Villar’s exaggerating the story instead of just focusing on his own remarkable story of catapulting himself from middle class entrepreneur to corporate titan.

Villar seems so hell-bent on winning the presidency that all other considerations are being relegated to the back seat. Thus his supporters have circulated patently falsified psychological reports and unverified ones. And there’s Gilbert Remulla, his spokesman and a senatorial candidate of the Nacionalista Party, finally admitting that he visited Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. in jail—after Andal Jr. damaged Villar by first publicly proclaiming support for him, and then calling a press conference to try to convince people that he is supporting Aquino.