Singer Leah Navarro and former Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te’s discussion on Twitter has gone viral on social media and raised the eyebrows of the netizens.
On October 31, Te made a tweet asking his followers what they think the reason for the series of quakes in Mindanao.
“What’s with all the earthquakes in Mindanao?” Te asked.
One of the Twitter users who responded to Te’s tweet is Leah Navarro, who’s a known critic of President Rodrigo Duterte.
“Retribution?” Navarro said.
Navarro made a short response, but it’s already enough to receive criticisms from the netizens who are urging the other social media users not to connect politics with the Mindanao quake.
Marawi crisis spokesman and former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) assemblyman Zia Alonto Adiong is one of the netizens who criticized Te and Navarro for being “insensitive”.
“We don’t obligate people from afar to extend help to Mindanao as this would require logistical considerations and obviously for some, travel is indeed an issue. However, we also do not expect people to be this callous in expressing such insensitive remarks,” Adiong said.
“Nobody deserves to be out in the streets asking strangers for provisions. No one. For us who have experienced displacement, this challenge is real. And for those who are lucky enough to have a place they can go home to and can eat, shower, sleep comfortably under a sturdy roof, show a bit of kindness to those who are now devoid of the comfort you’re so blessed of. (By the way, this kind of attitude is a typical “us” and “them” mindset- the very source of division in this country. This has to stop.),” he also said.
Meanwhile, Leah Navarro said that she already deleted the tweet and apologized.
I apologized, deleted my tweet, but they just can’t find it in their hearts to forgive my one word reply in the form of a question. Now they’ve twisted it into a declaration. Why not help Mindanao instead? Stop wasting time on me, I’m not a victim. https://t.co/s5v5FN6pAt
— Leah Navarro (@leahnavarro) November 4, 2019
“I apologized, deleted my tweet, but they just can’t find it in their hearts to forgive my one-word reply in the form of a question. Now they’ve twisted it into a declaration. Why not help Mindanao instead? Stop wasting time on me, I’m not a victim,” Leah Navarro tweeted.