During the House committee on justice hearing yesterday, Congressman Bong Suntay of the Fourth District of Quezon City defended the statements made by the vice president about being the government’s “designated survivor,” essentially making the point that it could have been a joke and that one cannot be penalized for unenforceable statements.
He could have stopped there. But he took it further and cited his own fantasies about actress Anne Curtis when he saw her as an example of an act that he couldn’t be penalized for, because whatever he thought about her was all in his imagination.
Look. We know people have fantasies about people. Fine. Whatever. But it’s not really something you go around declaring to the world, no matter who you are, but especially if you’re an elected official who’s supposed to be respectable. It seems that so many elected officials these days just don’t care about behaving properly anymore, saying and doing questionable things under the banner of “I’m only human” and “Nagpapakatotoo lang ako,” as if standards no longer exist and those excuses shield them from taking accountability for the offensive things they say and do.
Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte has already put out a statement calling for Suntay to apologize and “conduct himself with the dignity that his office—and our city—demand.”
It’s interesting to find out that he was part of the group that passed the city’s Gender and Development Code. One wonders what part he actually played and what lessons he took away from developing that particular ordinance.
So far, he hasn’t apologized for what he said. In fact, he even doubled down and said that Anne Curtis should take what he said as a compliment. Someone needs to tell him that what he said can be likened to sexual harassment and that no one is obligated to feel grateful for being the target of unwanted suggestive comments.
