Sara Duterte: EDSA means freedom from selective moral standards

MANILA, Philippines — Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio lashed out at a Catholic archbishop for saying that her father, the president, has "singlehandedly defaced the memory of the EDSA revolution."

Duterte-Carpio offered a strong defense of President Rodrigo Duterte after Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas wrote an open letter to the late Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin.

The mayor of Davao City labeled the archbishop "truly, madly, deeply worse than a hundred President Dutertes."

She also lectured to the prelate on what freedom and EDSA meant.

"You preach about freedom as if you invented it, as if it is your gift to us. Let me tell you what freedom is. It is to live a life that is free from your selective moral standard. This is what the meaning of EDSA is," she said.

The younger Duterte said that her father understood the 1986 revolution and its significance.

"My father perfectly understood what the spirit of EDSA is, otherwise, he would not have told me to never forget that night of 31 years ago. And I now believe that he understands it better than you do," Duterte-Carpio said in a Facebook post.

The Davao mayor painted a dark picture of the country before her father became president. She said that since 1986 until seven months ago, the Philippines had been hounded by corruption, crime, territorial wars of gangs and drug lords, extrajudicial killings, narco-politics, terrorism, protracted rebellion, abuse of power in government, political bickering and entry of foreign mafias.

"It surely did not start when President Duterte took office," she said.

Villegas recently penned an open letter to his mentor, Sin. In it, he criticized the past eight months of the present administration that saw more than 7,000 people killed in the name of its war on drugs.

"Four days of bloodless revolution! Wow! Now 8 months of relentless killings of the poor in the name of 'change'! It is a nightmare, Your Eminence! It is a shame," Villegas said in the letter.

Villegas also lamented the seeming political rehabilitation and resurgence of the Marcoses, whose patriarch, Ferdinand, was toppled from power in the 1986 revolution.

Villegas said: "The dictator ousted by People Power is now buried among heroes. The Lady of 1,200 pairs of shoes is now Representative in Congress. History books are rewritten. Historical memory is revised. The hero is a villain. The plunderers are now heroes."

The Davao City mayor blamed the Catholic church for her father's popularity.

"He won the presidency precisely because you ignored what was wrong with this world. All you desired was to put into power a leader who walks and talks like you -- someone who is definitely not Rodrigo Duterte," Duterte-Carpio said.

Without mentioning anyone, she said: "When your friend failed as a president, I cannot remember you calling it the rape of EDSA. You just swept it under your glitzy rugs and you moved on, back to business -- back to acting as if you can save us all from hell."

President Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, had a rocky relationship with the Catholic Church, especially over the passage of the Reproductive Health bill. Aquino and his allies also criticized the church for a perceived silence when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whom the Aquino administration imprisoned on graft and electoral fraud charges, was president.

Duterte has been criticized for alleged abuses of human rights, especially in his administration's war on drugs. Around 7,000 killings, both in police operations and by alleged vigilante groups, are yet to be solved.

Cardinal Sin was instrumental in toppling two presidents, Marcos and convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada. He was the archbishop of Manila for three decades and was seen by some as the moral compass of the country when he was still alive.