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Only one word to describe this: Nasty!
“Joan Mae Salvador, secretary general of the Gabriela National Alliance of Women, made a statement criticizing President Benigno Aquino III for comparing his mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, to Gabriela Silang, the first Filipino woman revolutionary leader,” reports Rio N. Araja in Manila Standard Today.
Aquino had made the reference in a speech that he delivered last Wed, Mar 25, at the event honoring women entrepreneurs who are part of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)-Coca-Cola Philippines project called the Sari-sari Store Training and Access to Resources (STAR) program. It’s the same International Women’s Month-timed event where Aquino once again joked about his love life.
READ: PNoy jokes about his love life at International Women’s Month event
Anyway, Salvador stated that the comparison between Silang and Aquino’s mother “was not only an insult to their group, which is named after Silang, wife of the Ilocano revolutionary leader Diego Silang, but also to the heroine herself.”
Salvador stated: “Only someone so out of touch with reality and desperate to raise his plummeting popularity rating could think of something as incredible as likening his mother to Gabriela Silang.”
Salvador added: “The difference between Gabriela and Cory Aquino is as wide as the Pacific Ocean. Cory Aquino may have succeeded in taking up the fight of her husband Ninoy [Benigno Aquino Jr.], but it was never a fight against foreign domination. Cory in fact continued the centuries-old subservience to US economic and political interests, something which her son Noynoy is carrying on up to this very day.”
It wasn’t long before Malacañang reacted to Salvador’s scathing statement.
“In a radio interview, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda reminded Gabriela that the late President Corazon Aquino has done a lot for the country,” reports ABS-CBNnews.com.
Lacierda stated, “We believe that President Cory Aquino has done so much for the country. She has led the fight against dictatorship after the assassination of Senator Ninoy Aquino. She has brought so much hope. She has brought a reformed government — one that is not acknowledged only by Filipinos, but also acknowledged by the international community.”
Lacierda then added that “Gabriela should expand its myopic vision.”
Photo: Gov.ph
