Faking one’s poverty

It all began when Philippine Star columnist Billy Esposo wrote about a letter sent by someone from Tondo, who claims having remembered the Villar brothers going to a Catholic private school (Santo Nino or Holy Child), and being fetched by a stainless steel owner-type jeep (we used to call it “nikilado”). I remembered that sometime in 2007, when I was personally mulling over the probability of running for vice-mayor of Manila in the Lim ticket, I was invited by a high school chum to attend the birthday party of a barangay chairman in North Balut, whose residence was in the main road of San Rafael Village in the boundary of Tondo and Navotas.

Now I happen to be familiar with the place. A high school classmate resided there, and when we were in our junior and senior years, some of us would go there for the fiesta. Then, and in 2007, it was a gated subdivision, with security guards posted at the entrance. The houses in the subdivision were those of the upwardly wealthy, at worst B income level, even A, except that likely they were not paying the right income taxes. The residents were mostly wealthy merchants or businessmen who made their pile in Divisoria, or the fishing enclave that was, and is, Navotas. My high school classmate’s father had a trucking and stevedoring business in North Harbour.

Back to the barangay chairman’s birthday celebration in 2007. I was introduced to a lady who was the husband of Cesar Villar, the brother of Sen. Manny Villar, then running for re-election. Cesar was a student of mine in college, when I taught some economics subjects. He was also working in the staff of then Senate President Manny Villar, until he succumbed to renal failure three years ago.

Then Manuel B. Villar Jr., who is running for president of the land now, came out with his ad about “Panata”, where he promises that he will once and for all end poverty ( “Panata ko…Tatapusin ang Kahirapan”). In that spiel, he starts by personally, on your face, and with a picture of him and his brother, asking: “Nakaranas na ba kayong… mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang perang pampagamot, wala ka namang magawa?”

My first impulse was one of sympathy. Dalawa na palang kapatid ni Manny Villar ang namatay, I thought, knowing that my college student Cesar died in 2008. Later, Billy Esposo invited me and some other writers to his office, where he showed us facsimiles of the death certificate of Manny’s deceased brother, the one adverted to in his television commercial. I have seen since the certified true copy issued by the National Statistics Office.

Daniel Villar y Bamba died of cardiac and respiratory failure brought about by complications arising from leukemia. He did not die because, as his brother Manny claims, “walang perang pampagamot”. Leukemia was incurable then. Whether rich or poor, leukemia was a death sentence, a great leveller even. George H.W. Bush had a daughter, George W. Bush, who died of leukemia in Houston, Texas. And President Bush was already very rich at the time. Anderson Hospital in Houston was, then and now, the world’s leading cancer treatment facility. But in 1962, neither chemotherapy nor bone marrow transplant were provided by medical science. Had Manny Villar simply said, in his “panata”, that “wala ka namang magawa”, that would have been true, because cancer of the blood cells was incurable. But he clearly said, “wala kang pera” as Danny’s cause of death. In fine, Villar blamed his poverty, or more correctly, his parents’ poverty, as having caused his younger brother’s death. Not only does Villar lie so brazenly; he mocks his parent’s memory; he defiles his brother’s memory by making a tall tale about an unfortunate experience.

Danny Villar was 3 years and 8 months old in October of 1962, and was confined at the FEU Hospital for 13 days prior to death. His body was transferred from FEU Hospital to Funeraria Paz. Those details are written on the death certificate.

The middle class have to scrimp, then and more so now, to be able to afford a private hospital. Many cannot even afford PGH or San Lazaro, which are public hospitals, because they have to buy IV fluids and medicines yet. Funeraria Paz, then and till now, is a rich man’s mortuary. The near and cheaper funeral parlors then were Tres Amigos and Vasquez in Sta. Cruz, Manila. The truly poor, then and now, would park their dead inside their hovels, or in the streets, shielded from sun and rain by makeshift tents, and hoping equally poor neighbours would dig deep inside their alcancias to have enough to bury their dead.

But what struck us was the address in the death certificate. It was Bernardo Street, San Rafael Village, Navotas. I sent a friend to see Mayor Toby Tiangco of Navotas, but instead he got to talk to the brother who is now running for mayor, who would not cooperate. “Mahirap na…baka manalo pa ‘yan, kawawa kami”, said Toby’s successor. Still, persistence paid off. We secured first the TCT of one Arnaldo Borres, an Ilonggo whose business is fish trading. He bought the property from Manuel Villar Sr. and Curita Bamba in 1987, who before 1962 were already wealthy. They owned two adjoining lots of 280 square meters each, for a total of 560 square meters. On it was built a two-storey house, one-and-a- half we used to call it, which was like the houses you would see in Philam Village in QC or even San Lorenzo in Makati in the early sixties. The same house stands to date, and we took pictures of what is definitely a wealthy man’s house, upper middle class at least. The same security guard outpost that I saw in my high school days and in 2007 stood there too.

We got likewise the TCT of Manuel Villar Sr., and upon its back was annotated an encumbrance of 16,000 pesos with GSIS. This confirms the fact that Manny Villar’s father was a government employee (Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources), while his industrious mother, Curita Bamba was a seafoods dealer. That he borrowed 16,000 pesos at the time to build his house and mortgaged his 560 square meter property. This shows that the Villars were upwardly mobile, even rich. Do you know any poor urban dweller who owns 560 square meters of urban land, and has a “materiales fuertes” residence in a gated subdivision?

I called up my high school chum who lived in San Rafael Village, and asked him if he remembers how much they paid for their lot in 1960 when they transferred there from their Juan Luna St. digs. They owned three adjoining lots, he said, a total of 780 square meters, and he recalls his father saying it cost about a hundred thousand pesos. (In the early 60’s, a Mercedes Benz cost 10,000 pesos; a Coke was 15 centavos; a kilo of pork was 6 pesos). The minimum wage then was 120 pesos a month (you read right, a month) which is the equivalent of three hours of work these days. And mind you, Manuel Villar Sr. was a government employee, a budget officer at that.

My grandmother’s poor family used to bring patis, bagoong alamang and sukang Paombong from their small Malolos house to San Pablo City during the early 90’s. Later, when my mom was born, Lola Ines already had a thriving seafoods dealership in San Pablo City in Laguna, that afforded the family to send my mom to medical school at the University of Santo Tomas. Before the war, my grandparents virtually controlled the fish wholesale business not only in San Pablo, but neighboring towns like Alaminos, Nagcarlan, Calauan, and Tiaong, Dolores in Quezon. By the time I was four, we had a brand new air-conditioned Cadillac (General Motors) to replace our Plymouth (Chrysler).

Yes we had poor origins, but I guess like Villar’s enterprising parents, Mang Manuel and Aling Kuring, sipag at tiyaga got them upwardly mobile, like any other Filipino parent who could only wish the best for their kids, and work hard to provide well. Manny Villar and his siblings are fortunate they had such industrious parents. Which is why when he pretends to have been poor at birth and beyond, he mocks his parents’ noble efforts and desecrates the memory of his father as well as brother.. What kind of character does Manuel B. Villar, Jr. possess?

Parenthetically, when Manny was running for congressman of the lone district of Las Pinas, he never capitalized on his being poor, my Las Pinas friends tell me. He was after all married to the richest family in town, whose patriarch was for the longest time the mayor of this suburban town, now city. Was he then hiding his simple origins, afraid that people might say he just married into great wealth? What kind of character does Manuel B. Villar Jr. possess?

Portraying oneself as being poor is a lie, a “fantasy” as Billy calls it, and an “awesome claim” as Winnie wrote in her Saturday Inquirer column. It fools the poor into believing that he empathizes with them, that he knows how it feels to be poor. It plays on the emotionalism about our “great divide” between the few who are rich and the many who are poor. But using one’s dead brother to further political ambition is gross, ghoulish, and in the same tradition as Dona Gloria Macapagal de Arroyo, betrays a penchant for, nay, a habit, to LIE.

“Capaz”, my Lola would say, of worse things, like striking a deal to become a Villarroyo.. As Susan Roces, widow of FPJ, correctly puts it --- “Ang sinungaling ay kapatid ng magnanakaw”.

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The May 10 elections, and our choice for the top leaders of the land, is a watershed for our democracy, and crossroads in attempt to escape from a system which oppresses us all because it is presided over by greedy and abusive power.

We need a president we can TRUST, above all other qualities.

How can you trust a man who blatantly lies about a brother’s death, and would countenance faking poverty to fool the people?

Pekeng mahirap. Pati kaawaawang kapatid ginamit. Hindi ka ba kinikilabutan sa pinaggagagawa mo, Money Villarroyo, este, Manny Villar Jr. pala?

(banayo_at@yahoo.com)

LITO BANAYO
MALAYA Column for Tuesday, 30 March 2010