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If you know your history, you won’t be surprised when we say Senator Bongbong Marcos should expect a lot of heated comments over his statement on this matter.
In 1974, then-First Lady and Metro Manila governor Imelda Marcos was said to have had whitewashed walls put up to “hide” shanties from the view of foreigners who were in town for the Miss Universe pageant. Ironically, President Noynoy Aquino’s administration was also accused of resorting to the same trick during the Asian Development Bank meeting in 2012.
“Senator Bongbong Marcos refused to accept the statement of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) that the so-called family camp held in Batangas for Metro Manila street dwellers merely coincided with the Pope’s visit last week,” reports ABS-CBNnews.com.
In an ambush interview on Fri, Jan 23, Marcos remarked in Filipino, “It’s rather curious because the poor are the ones whom Pope Francis wants to see but they were hidden.”
Earlier this week, the fact that the DSWD took street kids and their families — a total of around 490 to 500 people — to a resort in Batangas for the duration of Pope Francis’ visit was exposed in a TIME magazine article written by Charlie Campbell.
READ: DSWD took street kids and their families to Batangas resort during Pope’s visit
The article is entitled, “Pope Francis and the mystery of Manila’s vanishing street children.”
The street kids and their families occupied a total of 70 rooms from Jan 14 to Jan 19, with each room going for PHP4,000 per day.
Photo: Cesar Tomambo, Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau (PRIB)
