Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim said Thursday he rejected a plea of ARMM vice gubernatorial bet Margarita Cojuangco to extend the deadline for stopping the sale of pirated CDs and DVDs in Quiapo, Manila, which recently was named by the Washington-based Office of the US Trade Representative as one of the most notorious markets for pirated products.
The counterfeits are mostly being sold by Muslims, and on Thursday Lim said Cojuangco had visited him the day before to ask him to extend the June 30 deadline, but he refused.
“She asked me if it was possible to give the Muslims six more months, but I said no,” Lim said during a dialog to stop the sale of pirated discs in the area.
Cojuangco, the wife of Jose Peping Cojuangco (president of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former Tarlac representative), was governor of Tarlac from 1992 to 1998, and is known for her humanitarian projects and work among Muslim communities. In the 1970s she was voted by Harper’s Bazaar magazine as the of the 10 most beautiful women in the world.
Cojuangco is also an aunt of President Benigno Aquino III. She had earlier filed her certificate of candidacy to run for vice governor in the Aug. 8 elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Almost all of those selling pirated discs in Quiapo are Muslims who fled the war-torn areas in Mindanao, and on Thursday Lim said he had allowed them to violate the law for humanitarian reasons, but now they must stop.
“You evacuated Mindanao and came to Manila, where your rights are respected, to live a peaceful life,” he said.
“Due to a lack of opportunities, you were forced to engage in this kind of business, but it has created a bad image for Quiapo.”
Lim said the Muslims must now shift to selling legitimate goods or he would start going after them.
By Macon Ramos-Araneta
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