Netizens reacted negatively to GMA’s reporter Raffy Tima’s Facebook post about the traffic on EDSA. They perceived Tima’s post as a way of blaming President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential convoy on July 1 on his way to Camp Crame for the PNP turnover ceremony.
This is the post that angered Duterte’s supporters, making them think that Tima has not gotten over the issue of Duterte catcalling his wife, fellow GMA reporter Mariz Umali, during a previous press conference.
Netizens interpreted Tima’s post as a hit against Duterte when he said “Change has come?” They considered this as Tima mocking Duterte’s campaign slogan, “Change is coming.”
Many of the comments urged Tima to move on from the incident and bashed him for expecting Duterte to resolve traffic issues on the first day of his presidency. There were also comments filled with expletives attacking Tima and threatening his life.
The furor over Tima’s post even made it to online blog sites with headlines like “Raffy Tima Blames Duterte’s Presidential Convoy for Metro Manila Traffic.”
However, there are also a few netizens who saw a different angle to Tima’s post.
One netizen, Harold Roldie M. Gomez, defended Tima and explained what the GMA reporter is really trying to say, which Tima later agreed to in a comment.
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Gomez commented:
“What raffy tima is trying to say here is this, post photos of a clear light traffic edsa, people would then just react that wow! No heavy traffic at all, that’s change, but before most of us gets misinformed and bashed him with posting incorrect information, he captioned it that way saying that change is yet to come, and the light free flowing traffic is due to traffic was hold to give way to the presidential convoy. He didn’t said that he’s disappointed with the presidential protocol or agitated that change is yet to come, he just reported what is needed to report, it’s not even an opinion or column piece. We should not put words into his mouth. That’s how you caption photos, try to read photo captions of newspapers and digital formats. God!”
And Tima replied to Gomez with this comment:
“You got it man. Your comprehension is even much better than some websites peddling misinformation and spins. Salamat sa malinaw mong pag intindi sa simpleng post ko, mabuhay ka.”
The traffic crisis in Metro Manila is one of the biggest issues in the country that Duterte promised to tackle and which he proposed to resolve with adding train carriages and improving public transportation. His administration is even eyeing emergency powers to deal with the issue.
As explained by Gomez above, Tima could have really been proactive when he captioned his post, knowing that there is a huge possibility of Duterte’s supporters jumping in to comment and praise the president for clearing the road of traffic on the very first day of office.
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