(Eagle News) — Presidential daughter Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio hit back at Archbishop Soc Villegas for calling the Dutertes pimps of Edsa and accusing them of trying to prostitute the meaning of Edsa People Power, saying it was actually her father who understoood the EDSA spirit better than the priest.
Sara told Villegas that freedom is living a life that is free from your selective moral standard. “This is what the meaning of EDSA is,” she said.
She said it was wrong of Villegas and the Catholic Church to accuse her father of defacing the memory of EDSA.
Before this, the Davao City mayor had kept silent over the continued attacks being made by Catholic priests and bishops on his father.
But on Friday, she broke her silence and hit their stance on EDSA, saying, “Your group is sadly a bunch of delusional hypocrites.”
She said she was deeply disturbed by the letter Villegas made to the late Cardinal Sin criticizing the Dutertes.
“Unfortunately for you Archbishop Villegas, this is not a biased commentary on your letter to the dead because I am not a fan of President Duterte. But you are truly, madly, deeply worse than a hundred President Dutertes,” she said in her statement Friday.
-“Never forget this,” Sara recalls her father telling her about EDSA
She recalled how her father woke her and her brother up on the night of the EDSA Revolution, on February 25, 1986, and told them to remember very well what was happening then.
Her father brought her and her brother then to the San Pedro Cathedral on that fateful night.
She said she remembered her father telling her and her brother: “Timan-i ninyo ning gabhiona ni. Ayaw ninyo kalimti (Remember this night. Never forget this).”
“I have a memory of myself standing on the stairs of the San Pedro church bell tower, listening to the incessant ringing of the bells. I did not understand what was happening, but I surmised that it must be something very important because my father had to get me out of bed to watch cheering and partying adults on the streets,” she further recalled.
Now, Sara said, she can say that the celebration of the 1986 EDSA revolution is important but only to commemorate what the people did for the country on a certain period of its history.
-Delusional hypocrites
“I find it hard to understand why this bloodless revolution has become the standard definition of freedom for our country and this standard is forced down our throats by a certain group of individuals who think they are better than everyone else. These are the elite and their friends, including Archbishop Villegas,” Sara said.
“Your group is sadly a bunch of delusional hypocrites. While all of you were up there riding high on your horses, you failed to notice that many of us down here empathize with what Rodrigo Duterte is saying because it is the hard truth. It is truly without the air of hypocrisy that we smell from your kind,” she said.
The presidential daughter said her father perfectly understood what the spirit of EDSA is, “otherwise, he would not have told me to never forget that night of 31 years ago. And I now believe that he understands it better than you do.”
“Since 1986 and until seven months ago, I remember that our nation has been hounded by corruption, crime, territorial war of gangs and drug lords, extrajudicial killings, narco politics, terrorism, protracted rebellion, abuse of power in government, political bickering and the entry of foreign mafias,” she said.
It surely did not start when President Duterte took office, Sara added.
“When your friend failed as a President, I cannot remember you calling it the rape of EDSA. You just swept it under your glitzy rugs and you moved on, back to business — back to acting as if you can save us all from hell,” she stressed.
-Sara: Villegas worse than a hundred President Dutertes
Sara reminded Villegas that President Duterte won the presidency precisely because “you ignored what was wrong with this world.
All you desired was to put into power a leader who walks and talks like you — someone who is definitely not Rodrigo Duterte.”
“You are deeply worse than a hundred President Dutertes,” Sara said in her statement which she personally wrote and released to media Friday.
