Villar was never poor, says Aquino

Liberal Party presidential candidate Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III told his rival Nacionalista Party rival, Manuel "Manny” Villar, on Tuesday to stop blaming others for persistent doubt about the claim he was born poor.

"The problem with him, he was the one who claimed he was poor. There are other people who took him up on that claim as well as other claims he made. But instead of answering the questions squarely, to prove his point in all his assertions, why does he keep blaming us for all his problems [of which] he was a participant [while] we are observers far removed?” Aquino said in a press conference at the Liberal Party headquarters in Quezon City.

Villar has disputed statements he came from a middle-class family and was not born dirt-poor as he claims in his multi-billion-peso media campaign. Skeptics have pointed out that Villar went to a private school, his family owned a business in the public market, he ate corned beef for breakfast (not the typical fare for the masses), and his family could afford to go to private hospitals.

Aquino denied that the LP was behind what Villar described as a smear campaign to discredit his roots in poverty.

"At the most, we were just given information about all of these by the people who felt the need and the compulsion to check on the veracity of these claims. It’s a squid tactic,” said Aquino.

Aquino said that he and his siblings were born at the FEU Hospital, which was the same hospital where Villar’s brother, Danny, was hospitalized before he died.

"I think we were well-off at that point in time—I was born in 1962—and FEU is considered a good hospital. That is why I find it hard to understand why go to a premium hospital if you can’t afford to buy medicine and pay the bill?” asked Aquino.

In a statement, Liberal Party senatorial candidate Dr. Martin Bautista said that Villar was taking voters for a ride with the claim that “Danny died because Villar’s family cannot afford the cost of his treatment.”

“Didn’t the Villars know that Danny had leukemia, that there was no treatment to speak of that time? The latest statement, as the cliché goes, leaves more questions than answers,” he said.

Danny passed away in October 1962 and Bautista pointed out that the breakthrough in the treatment of childhood leukemia came only in 1965 with the introduction of chemotherapy.

“It is regrettable that the late Danny Villar has been dragged into a mess that his own brother created to project a ‘tunay na mahirap’ image. But truth has a way of finding light so everyone can see through the slick and gloss of propaganda,” he said.