A failed effort by a spokesman to cover up the real reasons behind last week’s hospitalization of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has further eroded her credibility.
The new trouble for the beleaguered 62-year-old started when her office said she would go on self-quarantine in a posh hospital in metropolitan Manila’s Las Pinas City upon arrival home from a three-nation trip early last week.
According to a press release by the presidential office, Arroyo was setting an example of social responsibility amid the threat of swine flu, which has afflicted more than 1,000 people in the Philippines.
But information slipped out to the media that Arroyo actually had her leaking breast implants repaired during her confinement, forcing the president’s spin doctors to go into overdrive.
“The issue is not that [Arroyo] had a breast implant but that they have to lie about such a simple matter,” columnist Neal Cruz lamented in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Cruz said the incident showed that “telling lies is common practice” in Arroyo’s administration, in which a number of her spokespeople and aides have been forced in the past to give half-truths to the public to protect her and her family from scandals.
“The trouble with telling lies [is] you are caught in the web of your own lies,” he said.
Journalist Jarius Bondoc stirred the current controversy when he questioned the government’s “self-quarantine” spin on Arroyo’s hospitalization.
Bondoc said that after arriving from her foreign trip, Arroyo partied all night on Tuesday at the wedding anniversary of a trusted Cabinet man with dozens of people before she checked in at the hospital on Wednesday.
He said that based on a tip by an informant at the hospital, the real reason for Arroyo’s hospitalization was to have her leaking breast implants repaired.
“She had mammoplastic repair of her leaking breast implants done in the 1980s, excision of inguinal [groin] cyst and laser depilation of unwanted hair in that area and the armpits,” he wrote in his column in the Philippine Star newspaper.
Presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde bristled at reporters when asked about Bondoc’s expose. He dismissed it as nonsensical, saying that Arroyo is not an actress fixated with such cosmetic surgery.
“Just look if the president had a breast implant,” he said. “It’s obvious if women have had breast implants. The sexy actresses with boobs, they’re the ones who underwent breast implants. We can’t say the same thing of the president.”
But as more details about her breast implants leaked to the media, Remonde changed his tune and admitted Arroyo had “something” placed in her breast in the 1980s.
“An abscess was removed [from her breast], and something was put in its place,” he said while stressing that during her most recent hospitalization, Arroyo did not get her old implants replaced.
Remonde also insisted that Arroyo’s main reason for checking in at the Asian Hospital was for self-quarantine in accordance with the swine-flu advisory by the Department of Health.
He added that while undergoing self-quarantine, Arroyo took the opportunity to undergo biopsies for lumps in her breast and groin.
“She was given a clean bill of health because the results of the biopsies done on her breast and her groin were all negative,” he said.
Remonde’s failed cover-up was reminiscent of what happened in 2005 when then-press secretary Ignacio Bunye dismissed as part of a destabilization plot the release to the public of wiretapped conversations between Arroyo and a senior elections commissioner allegedly about rigging the 2004 presidential vote.
Bunye said the conversations did not happen and even alleged that the leaked recording was fabricated.
But as more details about the alleged conversations became available to the media, Arroyo addressed the nation on national television and apologized for talking to the elections commissioner while votes were still being counted.
She, however, never admitted that she connived to cheat in the 2004 elections.
Senator Aquilino Pimentel said that while the issue should have been kept private, Arroyo’s aides mishandled the controversy, making a mountain out of a molehill.
“We have fake elections, we have a fake president, now we have fake boobs,” he said. “It’s fake all over.”
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS