MANILA, Philippines — “The architects of lies will have their day of reckoning.”

This was former National Union of Journalist of the Philippines (NUJP) national chair Inday Espina Varona’s warning, as the award-winning journalist assailed her inclusion in the expanded matrix of Malacañang that tagged her and other Duterte administration critics to a purported plot to expel President Rodrigo Duterte.

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According to Espina-Varona, the release of four matrices produced by Malacañang was an apparent diversionary scheme and urged the public to not be swayed and maintain their focus on the May 13 midterm elections, to vote for candidates who would keep the independence of the Senate and House of Representatives.

“The architects of lies will have their day of reckoning. Deny them the impact of the diversion they seek. That is the best action now,” she said in a statement.

“From now till Monday, focus on the need to vote for people who will keep the Senate independent and, as much as humanly possible, the House of Representatives, too,” added Espina-Varona, who is also a contributing editor and writer at ABS-CBN News.

She also urged the public to keep their attention to “key issues at stake.” She enumerated the following:

The sell out of national sovereignty;

The offering of our lands and waters to rapacious foreign governments and entities;

The goal of changing the Constitution to institutionalize tyranny and short-circuit the processes of exploitation of people and resources;

The efforts to ward off any further accountability for the family of the late, thieving dictator Marcos;

The ugly truth that the country’s biggest drug lords and smugglers have waltzed away from justice while thousands of our poor have died without due process;

The abandonment of Marawi’s homeless, the attempt to turn innocent victims into villains, after reducing their Islamic city into rubble;

The massacres of farmers, the continuous hounding of indigenous peoples;

The AFP and PCOO’s embarrassing failure to dupe the international community into swallowing their lies;

The hard-won court victories that give the lie to claims that cops walked the straight and narrow in the drug war or that the AFP and other government units doing the right thing in stalking human rights defenders; and

The fact that the party lists and candidates they have tarred and harassed for a year now are still respected and admired by voters.

“Fight on. There is no other choice. The level of idiocy is laughable. But buffoons can be deadly, too. The regime’s goal is to kill democracy,” Espina-Varona said.



“Let’s stand our ground. United, if possible. But if that’s impossible, let’s train the fire where it counts. Hope everyone has learned the hard lesson,” she added. /kga

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