ON QUIT-SMOKING CHALLENGE
VILLAR HAS BIGGER SINS - AQUINO

BACACAY, Albay: Which is the bigger sin, smoking or diverting government-funded roads to benefit one's private corporation? On this note, Liberal Party standard bearer Senator Noynoy Aquino responded Monday to rival Sen. Manuel Villar Jr.'s latest challenge for him to stop his bad habits, such as smoking. "In the scale of sins, yun bang issues about C-5, C-5.5., Norzagaray are less than my smoking?" he asked reporters here.

"Should he be focusing on my smoking instead of answering whether or not the resources of the state were utilized properly in building two roads to serve one end in C-5 or to have one road benefiting a subdivision in Iloilo that turned first-class irrigated agricultural lands into a subdivision? I think at the very least we should question his priorities," Aquino said at a press conference here.

He was referring to ethical questions surrounding Villar's alleged involvement in the C-5 road mess and a similar mess involving the diversion of a road to his subdivision in Iloilo. Villar had also been accused of grabbing the land of farmers in Norzagaray in Bulacan, he noted.

On the other hand, he said that while he has not stopped smoking, he had never hidden it. "I try to make sure that I don't bother anybody when I indulge in this habit. I don't say it's a good habit. At this present time, giving it up will add more pressures than I think are unnecessary," Aquino said.