Perry Scope: The Politics of 'Faking Poverty'

I would like to share with critical thinkers an incisive article written by Perry Diaz with the catchy title . . . .

The Politics of ‘Faking Poverty’

A little over a week ago, columnist Billy Esposo’s article, “How Manny Villar lied and used the death of his brother Danny,” created a maelstrom of controversy that unleashed a torrent of criticism against presidential candidate Manny Villar for his claim that his family was so poor that his brother died because they couldn’t afford to buy him medicine.

It all started when Villar, in his “PANATA (Advocacy)” TV commercial, said: “Nakaranas na ba kayong … mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang pera pangpagamot (Have you experienced losing a brother because you did not have the money to provide him proper medical care)?” It was a tear-jerker “testimonial” of how poor Villar’s family was when he was growing up. It earned him sympathy and respect. His poll ratings started to shoot up and came to within two percent of presidential frontrunner Noynoy Aquino. Instantly, Villar’s rags-to-riches life story became the talk of the town. His success became everybody’s dream.

He was believed, emulated, adored, and loved. Suddenly, poor people were captivated by Villar’s magic, enthralled in virtual reality of a good life under the presidency of the man who broke the yoke of poverty and became one of the ten richest men in the country today. And captivated they were… until the truth set them free.

Faking Poverty

Truth came in an outpouring of articles written by some of the country’s best journalists: Billy Esposo, Lito Banayo, Solita Collas-Monsod, Conrado de Quiros, Manuel L. Quezon III, and many more. Their articles tell incontrovertible proof and compelling arguments that Villar lied about the death of his brother.

But what is sad is why Villar used the death of his brother to gain sympathy to increase his chances of winning the presidential elections? It was a calculated risk realizing that if he pulled it off, he would fulfill his dream of becoming president of the country. However, I’m pretty sure that he was also aware that if the truth came out, it would bring him down.

He took the gamble… and lost.

In an attempt to control the self-inflicting damage to his candidacy, Villar’s media people started spinning stories insisting that Villar was dirt poor. They’re saying that Danny was admitted to the charity ward of FEU Hospital. If that was the case, then Villar’s family didn’t have to worry about buying medicine for Danny — the charity ward would have provided for all the medicine Danny needed to recover from his illness.

But Danny’s illness was a complication from leukemia which at that time was incurable. Danny was terminally ill when he was admitted to the charity ward. So when Villar said in his TV commercial, “Nakaranas na ba kayong … mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang pera pangpagamot,” he lied. It was farthest from the truth.
Plagiarizing campaign ads

Recently, another controversy arose from one of Villar’s ads. Journalist Toto Causing exposed another Villar “fake” when he posted, “Manny Villar has been accused of plagiarizing the television advertisement campaign of a presidential candidate of Argentina, Lopez Murphy.” Causing stated: “Dubbed as the ‘upside-down’ advertisement, Villar’s TV ad narrated lines as each line is highlighted downwards and after reaching the most bottom line he narrated it again but reading each line in the upward direction. It turned out that Villar actually copied the advertisement of Argentina’s presidential candidate.” The Villar ad and the plagiarized Murphy ad can be viewed at www.GlobalBalita.com, “Did Villar commit plagiary in his campaign ad?”

Now, not only is Villar faking poverty, he is plagiarizing campaign ads.

Politics of ‘identifying with the poor’

Identifying with the poor is a popular election campaign strategy particularly in a country where the people are predominantly poor. “I’m poor, I’m one of you,” would resonate well with the marginalized sector.

Former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada successfully used that strategy when he entered politics. He used the moniker “Erap,” which is “pare” spelled backward, to identify with the poor, whose men commonly used “pare” — a contraction of “kumpare” — to address each other.

When he launched his presidential bid in the late 90s, he used the slogan, “Erap para sa mahirap” (Erap for the poor). It catapulted him to the presidency garnering the highest margin in presidential elections since the time of Marcos. The fact that he was born in Tondo, an impoverished district of Manila, helped seal his identification with the poor. But, most importantly, he showed a genuine sincerity in his sympathy and concern for the poor.

The late President Ramon “Monching” Magsaysay was the most successful politician in terms of identifying with the poor. Although he came from a middle-class family, Magsaysay projected himself as coming from humble background — he once worked as a car mechanic. When he was Secretary of Defense under President Elpidio Quirino, he started the “Land for the Landless” which eventually broke the backbone of the communist Huk insurgency. With the slogan, “Magsaysay is my Guy,” he won the presidential elections in 1953 defeating his former boss Quirino by 68.9% of the vote.

Politics of ‘faking poverty’

It did not then come as a surprise that Villar used the same strategy that Magsaysay and Estrada used successfully to win the presidency. However, Villar had a big problem: he is filthy rich. And that would not bode well with the poor. But he had one thing that he could use to his advantage: like Erap, Villar was born in the poor district of Tondo. All he had to do was embellish his life story.

To make the story short, Villar fashioned, or faked, a new image of himself — a rags-to-riches success story: the poor boy who fulfilled everybody’s dream of becoming rich. He would have succeeded had he not falsely used the death of his brother in his campaign commercial. That fake campaign commercial opened a can of worms that eventually gnawed acidly at the manufactured façade he built around his persona.

As a result, his campaign started to crumble. The latest Pulse Asia survey conducted on March 21-28 showed Noynoy Aquino pulling ahead of Villar: 37% for Noynoy, 25% for Villar. There is a trend that is showing a steady support for Noynoy. However, Villar’s ratings continue to slide from a high 35%, which was within 2% of Noynoy’s 37%, in the January 22-26 Pulse Asia survey.

In politics, once your ratings start to fall, your challenge is how to stop the gravitational pull. And like a meteor falling from space into the stratosphere, gravity takes over and what happens next is the spectacular disintegration of the meteor.

Is Villar’s meteoric rise going to disintegrate like a meteor falling from the sky?