Press Release
April 21, 2010

MUDSLINGING BETWEEN RIVAL CANDIDATES DEGRADES
ELECTORAL DEBATES -- PIMENTEL

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today deplored the tendency of adversaries in electoral exercises to engage in mudslinging and resort to inflammatory rhetoric in their desire to score political points.

Pimentel said candidates and their supporters are only hurting and destroying each other by trading insults instead of conducting intelligent debates during the poll campaign.

"We should help and encourage our people and our candidates to use language that is not inflammatory. We should all understand that those who disagree with us or those who are supporting candidates other than our choices are not our enemies. They are just political opponents who happen to disagree with us," he said.

Addressing the commencement exercises of the Urdaneta City University in Pangasinan, Pimentel stressed that the right to disagree with one another in public are hallmarks of a democratic order.

"Let us engage in political discussions in partisan debates, in impassioned arguments. But we do not have to punch each other, shoot each other or kill each other," he said.

Pimentel called on the citizens to choose the best candidates by emphasizing their credentials for public service, their capacity to do good, their ability to do good, their ability to keep their word and their love of country above self.

"Let us rise above false campaigning and distance ourselves from black propaganda. Let us deemphasize the negative. Let us stress the positive," the veteran parliamentarian said.

"If we underscore the foibles of our candidates, we end up choosing the lesser evil. But if we accentuate the positive, we would be electing the best among those aspiring for public office."

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