Pedestrian Observer GB: GMA’s Shameless Garcified Advertisement

There she goes again! Gloria M. Arroyo just can’t seem to shake the bad refutation that she seems to be known for this days starting with the 2004 election to questionable overpriced D. Macapagal Highway Robbery errr project to the ZTE-NBN kickback scandal and everything in between. The latest caper is the full-page advertisement of her fellow alumni that was exposed and repudiated in the article below by Chona A. Katigbak, Bea Tan, Cora B. Lopa, Zeny R. Tanada, and Mandy Torres, which I should just quote in full as it truly mirrors the shameless brazen act of a demented errrr desperate regime clinging to anything even her dead classmates. Yikes, and to think that it’s bad enough that unscrupulous backdoor Comelec operators pad the votes with names of the deceased we are now witnessing the lowest of the low in paid advertisement of bogus support is just unbelievable. Are they losing it or what? Here is the article titled, Pro-GMA ad brazenly padded:

MANILA, Philippines - In the interest of truth, we would like to set the record straight in regard to the full-page advertisement titled “Concerned Assumption women in support of truth and stability” (Inquirer, 3/13/08) and the correction the advertisers hastily, possibly frantically, issued two days later.

The advertisement, listing fellow alumnae of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from Assumption College who supposedly were supporting her, was clearly a brazen case of misrepresentation. The “honest mistake” was not as insignificant as the advertisers—upon being swamped with complaints of arbitrary listing—claimed they were. For how could people proclaiming themselves publicly to stand for the truth—indeed, paying their way dearly through publicity—have mistaken dead people (15 years dead in one case) for living Arroyo supporters, and graduates of other schools for alumnae of Assumption College, Ms Arroyo’s alma mater?

To say that the “errors” were made due to voluminous influx of data from relatives and friends is unacceptable. Would a relative volunteer the name of a loved one who has long been dead? Is it not deception, shameless as well as desperate, to nevertheless put on the list the name of a person who has told the advertisers to their faces, “’I don’t want to be included”?

In fact, from Ms Arroyo’s own class of 80 (yet, a moderate estimate) fewer than a dozen support her. The advertisers admitted 16 mistakes, but added new names to make up for them. But, again, how could the exact event of the misrepresentation be determined? Surely, if we had the time and resources to investigate more closely, we’d have found more evidence.

At any rate, such case of padding and lying could not have come as any surprise to anyone who knows how this government is run. It has been the story of GMA’s reign.