By Manny Pinol
Former congressman Pastor “Jun’ Alcover, Jr. of the Cebu City based party-list Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (ANAD) has publicly apologized to supporters and followers of Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte who he called a “psychopath” in his Facebook post.
In his post made last week, Alcover also accused Duterte of being the protector of drug dealers, smugglers and terrorists and labeled the Davao City Mayor as a “criminal.”
Alcover’s post received angry reactions from Duterte followers who are pushing the Davao City Mayor to run for President.
Virulent comments flooded his Facebook page and he initially allowed the posts to appear in his comment box.
He even challenged the posters to a fight “anytime, anywhere” accusing them of being paid hacks and “alipores” of the Davao City mayor.
As the comments came in by the hundreds almost all of which used vulgar and abusive language, Alcover obviously filtered the comments so that they will not appear automatically but will have to go through his approval.
I visited his page today and saw a post which said “To my enemies Sorry, hindi na mauulit.”
I posted a message in his comment box saying that those who reacted angrily were not his enemies and that they, including myself, were just offended by the comments he made about Duterte.
“It takes a lot of courage to say sorry,” I said as I accepted his apologies.
Alcover responded saying “Gov. Manny I understand. But I’m maintaining my stand. I’m not in favor of your candidate. But i will always respect your opinion .. . Thats politics .. We dis agre but we remained friends … Peace !.. God bless ..”
To that conciliatory message, I replied: “understand jun. that’s perfectly alright. we make our own choices based on what we perceive is right. as for me, the most serious issues in philippine politics today are corruption, the rising criminality and the growing frustration of people with government. based on this belief i made my choice. thanks and if i have time, i will link up with you when i would be in cebu. let’s engage in healthy discussion and debate. thanks.”
I appreciate that fact that former Congressman Alcover is man enough to realize that he breached the boundaries of proper ways of expressing dislike and even criticism.
The moral lesson here is that it is alright to criticize or even attack for as long as the attacks and criticisms are backed up by evidence.
Well, all is well that ends up well.
Peace.
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