‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it …’

George del Mar wondered “how far (Binay’s) propaganda ‘experts’ will go to make fools of themselves” (“Binay’s mental bankruptcy,” Letters, 8/8/15). We think he may have missed the point.

The blatant lies they keep telling the people are part of the game they are playing—i.e., Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ drivel: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” They are looking forward to the day they will have the last laugh!

Those guys never tire of repeating the lie over and over again! They keep insisting they have answered the charges already “point by point”—in a sworn affidavit and at various forums around the country where Vice President Jejomar Binay had speaking engagements! In that affidavit, Binay simply made blanket denials. His truthfulness might have been tested and his credibility firmly established if he had allowed himself to be questioned about the legitimacy of the source of his mind-blowing wealth. But he refused under all kinds of pretext. And in those forums, he made sure no one could ask questions about anything he was saying in his defense.

Alack, typical of the responses from people who do not know any better was the remark we heard quite often: “Oo nga naman. Sinagot na ni vice ang lahat na ’yan. Ano pa ba ang gusto nila? Pang aapi na talaga ’yan!” Given the multitude of unthinking voters we have in this country, heaven help us! Pero, por Dios, por santo, mag isip naman po sana sila! Ganito lang po kasimple ’yun. From “rags to riches” daw, and all from his labor as a “human rights” lawyer before he became officer in charge of Makati? His more prominent partners in self-sacrifice at that time were Rene Saguisag and Joker Arroyo who continue to live to this day like paupers by comparison.

Their clients were not the Ayalas and the Zobels but poor detainees during martial law. Their legal services were, of course, all “pro bono” (free of charge) or, as Saguisag loves to say, “puro abono”! Would Binay please answer many questions on how he “outsmarted” ace lawyers like Saguisag and Arroyo? It’s been a deadpan response from him all this time. Perhaps, there’s simply no legitimate way to explain how he and his family got so ultrarich!

One thing is beyond dispute: Makati was already the richest town in the country and its peso-billions were always there for the taking! And we all know that the Binays, once ensconced, never let go of Makati and have since been seen to be wallowing in unimaginable wealth. The disputable presumption of such wealth being ill-gotten should, by their continued refusal to explain its source, be deemed conclusive by now.

—CHIN CHIN KATIGBAK, cckatigbak@yahoo.com.ph