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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
Sen. Mar Roxas 2nd and a group of Tsinoy
businessmen lashed out at the “racial slur” uttered by Chief
Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol against a key witness in
the national broadband controversy.
“Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio
Apostol must apologize to the entire Filipino public, especially to
the Chinese-Filipino community, that has been shamed by his remarks,
and to the Chinese people who have suffered an insult despite their
deep friendship with the Philippines,” Roxas said Sunday in a
statement.
Apostol on Sunday evening apologized for the
remarks, saying that was simply caused by an “emotional
outburst.”
“Be that as it may, I sincerely apologize to
our hardworking and law-abiding Filipino-Chinese who may have been
offended by my unintended slur,” the ABS-CBN news website quoted
Apostol as saying.
Apostol said Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada Jr. was a
Chinese who should be deported to China for creating troubles in the
Philippines. Earlier, Lozada said his father came to the Philippines
to escape poverty from his town in Fujian province in southern
China.
Roxas said Apostol’s comment was uncalled for
and showed great disrespect for Filipinos with Chinese by blood,
including National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal.
“It is ironic that the President’s lawyer
has made a racial slur against the very nation from whom this
government has sought to borrow millions of dollars that have been
purloined by graft,” he said.
He contended that insulting Lozada will not make
his testimony less credible.
Tsinoys angered
Fernando Gan, secretary-general of the
Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FCCCI),
wrote Apostol a letter expressing the Tsinoys’ “strongest
indignation over this racial slur.”
“We believe that such unfair and insensitive
statement only tend to create a greater divide between the Tsinoys
and the mainstream Philippine society,” according to the letter.
Gan said the Federation wrote not in defense of
Lozada who is unknown to the organization, even his ethnic roots,
but in protest of Apostol’s racial discrimination against Chinese.
“It would have been callous if such utterance
were made by an unlearned individual,” he said. “But coming from
a bar top-notcher, a former city fiscal, former regional trial court
judge, former congressman and now chief presidential legal counsel,
such remarks are uncalled for.” Apostol had placed seventh in the
1958 Bar exams.
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