‘De Lima, mother of all lies?’

Lying has been very common to humans but it should not be an accepted norm. Even in the temptation of the first human beings, Adam and Eve, the serpent lied and manipulated them into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree. God told them, “You may eat the fruit of any tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil” but the serpent twisted God’s instruction by saying “Did God say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” Then the serpent lied and told them they would not die and that they would be like God.

We inherited the consequences of the first sin and we have not learned yet from this story. We continue to lie, we lie to ourselves, we lie to other people, and it seems lying has now become a usual practice in our society.

Nowadays, media and technology can be used to spread lies but I believe there are more deceits in the past due to less sources of information. We used to consider everything that is shown in the mainstream media as truth but now we have social media where we can interact with each other, share our sources of information, and hear or read all sides of a certain topic. We also have the Internet which gives us access to different sources. Yes, there are lies spreading in social media but fake news can be easily pointed out because the truth is easily accessible as well. However, I wonder how many things in our history is a lie or a perversion of truth; how many people have been deceived or manipulated by mainstream media? 

In politics, media has a great role in bringing out facts but they can also be used to spread lies. I am not a fan of the Marcoses and even in my exclusive interview with Bongbong Marcos, I firmly said that I voted and campaigned for Sen. Alan Cayetano. But here’s one of the things that made me realize that mainstream media can be biased: We were made to believe that it was former Pres. Marcos who ordered the killing of Ninoy Aquino. Some of us still believe that but if we think about it, how is it that two Aquinos became President and yet the mastermind of Ninoy’s assassination is still unknown?

Another example of how mainstream media can be used to lie was the Ro-Ro campaign in Hong Kong. My group, Mocha Girls, was sent to campaign for Duterte in Hong Kong as well where I saw it personally that there were only less than 500 people who went to the Ro-Ro Campaign but media reported “libo-libo” or thousands came to support Ro-Ro. It was an obvious lie to boost the morale of their supporters. I even have a video which I posted on social media.

Now let’s go to Sen. De Lima: She recently admitted that she had a relationship with his driver/bodyguard Ronnie Dayan. This revealed that her reputation is not as clean as she claims. She said in the past that the accusation by the President was a form of character assassination and requested him to double-check the information he had. For me, if lying to people is so easy with Sen. De Lima, how many more lies could she be hiding? She even used her being a woman to defend herself from critics. She said she is a strong woman and that she will fight back. If she is indeed a strong woman then why can’t she resist this simple temptation of not getting involved with a married man? I believe that the highest level of lying is not lying to other people but lying to oneself to the point that you don’t even know that you are lying. To me, Sen. De Lima is a perfect example of that.

The scriptures said that Satan is the father of all lies. I’m now curious if he left his wife in the Senate.