Film director Erik Matti is among those unhappy with actress-singer Toni Gonzaga's decision to appear as presenter at Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos and Sara Duterte’s proclamation rally Tuesday at the Philippine Arena.
While some simply grumbled quietly about it, Erik thought it best to air his sentiments on social media.
He wrote: "When Hitler runs for office after slaughtering millions of Jews and you still support his bid, the least you can do is acknowledge all the blood he has spilled and with integrity, stick to your own crazy misplaced loyalty in private or in silence."
"The atrocities of Hitler," he added, was "history" that "no one can refute."
"In the same way the plunder and the horrors of the Marcos regime to our country the Philippines, that no one has claimed responsibility until now with the players still roaming around free, moneyed and powerful, is irrefutable and a historical fact that cannot be forgotten and rewritten."
Erik claimed that the "victims" of both were all real people with names, families, siblings.
"No one can ever say they didn't exist," he said.
"I cannot fathom anyone, who have access to the same historical facts from our books and Youtube like everyone else, can still have the gall to hold their head so high to the point of being so arrogant and obnoxious to brush away critics and dissenters even acknowledging and flaunting it with such an insensitive hashtag," Erik continued, seemingly referring to how Toni handled the cries of disappointed netizens.
"That is just incomprehensible," he reiterated. "To give your support to any political candidate whether or not out of affinity, blood or loyalty is between you and your conscience. You can do whatever you want with your celebrity power and God’s guidance because this is a free world, after all. But to be brazen, arrogant and snooty makes all of it despicable, disgusting and really crude."
"What makes you people so emboldened, seeming almost like untouchables, to never have the decency to acknowledge with humble bowed heads and with Almighty God as your witness, that you are on the side of what history had unmistakably and irrefutably proven to have been part of the plunder and corruption of the Philippines then and now? Impunity and apathy run so deep in all of us," he ended, along with the hashtag "#bothered."
Note that the hashtag ran counter with what a netizen used to described Toni: "Unbothered."