MANILA, 1 October 2005 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo hit back at renewed attempts to seek her resignation, accusing senators of being part of a conspiracy to destabilize the administration and moving to break up the sugar hacienda of a former president who has vowed to lead a campaign for her ouster.
In a speech to families of military veterans, Arroyo defended her order banning executive officials from appearing at Senate investigations which she said were “inquiries in aid of destabilization.”
“I put my foot down for the sake of the people. For the sake of enabling the government to work rather than be disabled by the politics of insult,” Arroyo said, amid a looming confrontation with the Senate which has launched numerous probes into her government.
Arroyo said the Senate investigations merely resulted in “kangaroo court confusion leading to a situation where it is easy to have a power grab.”
She charged that the investigations were part of a continued effort to undermine her government following the quashing of an impeachment complaint in Congress on Sept. 6 and the failure of opposition attempts to organize huge street protests against her.
“They didn’t succeed in the impeachment, they did not succeed in the streets ... now they are bringing their battleground to the Senate,” she said.
Arroyo on June 27 apologized to the nation for her “lapse in judgment” in speaking to an official before the votes had been fully tallied but she denied any wrongdoing and vowed not to resign.
Despite the defection of key allies and some Cabinet members, Arroyo allies in Congress quashed an impeachment complaint against her. Subsequent opposition efforts to organize mass street protests against Arroyo fell short.
The president’s spokesman went further by specifically accusing Senate President Franklin Drilon of plotting Arroyo’s ouster through a series of investigations purportedly to unmask corruption, deepening the country’s political crisis.
For several months, senators have been probing allegations that Arroyo’s husband, son and brother-in-law received payoffs from illegal gambling operators, and this week, opened another investigation into wiretapped recordings of Arroyo allegedly plotting to rig last year’s polls with an elections commissioner.
The recordings, which emerged in June, served as a basis for an opposition bid to impeach Arroyo.
Drilon, an erstwhile Arroyo ally who joined former Cabinet members and ex-President Corazon Aquino in calling for her resignation, insisted the investigations were the oversight function of Congress and “in aid of legislation.”
Bunye said Drilon was plotting to oust Arroyo as early as June, when the apparent wiretaps of Arroyo speaking with an election official to secure a million-vote victory margin first emerged.
He said that Drilon, while still part of the Arroyo camp, persuaded her to publicly apologize for talking to the election official before the vote count was completed, but then turned against her.
Drilon acknowledged he was one of those who urged Arroyo to make the statement, and said, “Whether Mrs. Arroyo was sincere in making that public apology is now being put to question by Mr. Bunye’s unfounded and malicious allegations.”
Agrarian Reform
In a parallel move, Arroyo’s agrarian reform chief moved to scrap a scheme that gave workers shares instead of land at a plantation owned by former President Corazon Aquino’s family, saying it hasn’t lifted the laborers out of poverty.
Aquino approved agrarian reforms in 1988 that allowed plantation owners to distribute shares based on the value of property to workers in an attempt to ease tensions over land ownership that have fueled a long-standing communist rebellion in the countryside.
Shares were given to more than 11,000 workers at the Hacienda Luisita, a 4,500-hectare (11,115-acre) sugar cane plantation owned by the Aquino family in the northern province of Tarlac, but critics say the scheme has only helped landowners prolong their hold on property.
Yesterday, Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman recommended that the government scrap the stock distribution scheme.
“After 16 years of implementing the stock distribution option, the department is saddened by the fact that the living condition of the plantation workers did not improve,” Pangandaman said in a statement. “Worse, it deteriorated through the years, which is contrary to the vision of (the agrarian reform law).”
Under the law the land would be distributed to farmers, and landlords would be compensated. Pangandaman did not reveal other details of the decision and how it would be carried out.
The move must be approved by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council headed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. It wasn’t clear whether the decision would affect other plantations in the country.
Vigor Mendoza, a spokesman for the hacienda, said it will challenge the decision in court and added that the agrarian reform department polled less than 10 percent of the Luisita farmworkers.
He said the hacienda was not entirely to blame for the continuing poverty, saying the slump in the sugar industry worldwide was a major factor. He said farm workers now own their homes and have better access to health services, which were unavailable in the past.
Politically Motivated
Aquino indicated that the move was politically motivated. The former president has been involved in a campaign to oust Arroyo, who survived an impeachment bid last month by the opposition on charges of rigging last year’s election.
“To underscore the point that Cory Aquino should start behaving in a politically correct manner, the Hacienda Luisita issue was resurrected — a familiar refrain from the years of the Marcos dictatorship,” she said in a speech yesterday.
Mrs. Aquino said that she was not against Arroyo but for the search of truth.
“Allow me to explain my position in simplistic terms, I am not anti-GMA (the president’s initials), I am pro-truth,” said Aquino in video footage of the “mass for truth” at the Miriam College in Quezon City aired on GMA 7’s “Flash Report.”
Aquino, who supported a second popular uprising that toppled then President Joseph Estrada and swept Arroyo to power in January 2001, is now at odds with the president whom she asked to step down over allegations of poll fraud.
Aquino said the country was facing a “moral crisis,” which did not call for “numbers in the streets” but for a “resurgent moral force” and “reaffirmation of fundamental convictions.”
Aquino herself was part of street protests that called on Arroyo to resign and was now involved in a signature campaign to press this demand.
Pangandaman denied that politics played a role, saying a review of the stock scheme was prompted by a strike at the hacienda last November which led to a clash that left seven farmers dead and injured more than 100 police and workers.
The timing of the recommendation was mere “coincidence,” he said.
Aquino spokesman Rapa Lopa said Aquino is not involved in the operation of the plantation and has sold most of the shares she inherited from her parents.
Aquino indicated that the move was politically motivated. The former president has been involved in a campaign to oust Arroyo, who survived an impeachment bid last month by the opposition on charges of rigging last year’s election.
“To underscore the point that Cory Aquino should start behaving in a politically correct manner, the Hacienda Luisita issue was resurrected — a familiar refrain from the years of the Marcos dictatorship,” she said in a speech yesterday.
Abuse of Powers
Arroyo further angered her critics this week by issuing an order barring officials from testifying in Congress without her consent, prompting opposition leaders to accuse her of violating the constitution.
Arroyo aides say the Senate was abusing its powers and denied she violated any laws.
They noted that the Senate has stepped up its investigations against Arroyo, ordering her national security adviser detained for contempt on Sept. 21 after he refused to answer questions about a contract with an American law firm to lobby the US Congress on behalf of the Philippines.
This week, the Senate began hearings on alleged election cheating and a multi-million-dollar railway project involving China.
Arroyo responded by ordering all executive officials to get her consent before appearing before Senate.
A general who disobeyed this order and who accused her of election cheating in a Senate hearing on Wednesday now faces court martial.
Marine Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani and Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan told the Senate hearing last Wednesday said he sought to defy the order in the interest of truth.
The president said she wanted the truth to come out but only in a forum “where the rule of law is observed, where the rules of evidence are observed where those accused have a right to present their own defense in accordance with time-tested regulations.”
An assistant counsel of the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC, Efren Gonzales, was also told to explain why he attended a Senate inquiry on Thursday.
Gonzales attended a Senate probe into a railway contract funded by a Chinese loan, which was reportedly overpriced and surrounded with irregularities.
A group of 46 retired generals yesterday issued a manifesto supporting the decision of Gudani and Balutan to testify before the Senate.
The generals asked the leadership of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to “respond to the higher calling of moral judgment” in the quest for truth.
The group of resigned government officials collectively known as the “Hyatt 10” also lauded Gudani, saying his “courageous” testimony supported allegations that Arroyo cheated in the 2004 presidential election and strengthened its calls for her to step down.
A Clear Sign
“We are in solidarity with him because we know he and his family will experience the same kind of harassment we have received from Malacañang,” said former Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman.
Soliman said it was now “part of Gudani’s cross” to expect Arroyo’s camp to “destroy his credibility and accuse him of anything, including being an associate of Senator (Panfilo) Lacson, as if that’s a crime.”
She also decried Arroyo’s order as “a clear sign” that the presidential office was “trying to prevent people from testifying on the truth.”
Earlier, Communist Party spokesman Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal commended Gudani and Balutan, saying that “patriotic and democratic officers and soldiers are justified in withdrawing from an immoral, illegal and anti-people chain of command.”
Rosal said military officials or enlisted men who are targets of the government’s campaign of suppression can seek refuge with the rebels in territories in which they say they exercise a great deal of control.
He urged disgruntled government soldiers and military officials to come out in the open en masse and support the mounting people’s movement to oust Arroyo. (<>Input from Inquirer News Service & agencies)
