JEDDAH, 25 June 2004 — The proclamation of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the newly elected president and of Noli de Castro as vice president of the Philippines came at 3:35 yesterday morning. In what was the longest canvass in Philippine history, a joint session of the two houses of Congress took a record 44 days to proclaim Arroyo and de Castro. Only the proclamation of President Fidel Ramos in 1992 came close to taking as long at 42 days.
The opposition is still insisting that Arroyo stole the election from Fernando Poe Jr. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel declared that Poe had won the presidential race by 510,000 votes, and that Sen. Loren Legarda had won the vice presidential race by 702,000 votes over de Castro.
Not only that, but the opposition on Monday presented a election fixer, Rodolfo Galang, who admitted to helping the Arroyo administration shave off some 1.7 million votes in Mindanao from Poe in “Oplan Mercury.” He has since gone into hiding, scared of being killed by pro-administration hit men.
We will never know for sure whether the opposition is telling the truth or not. The overwhelming majority of administration politicians on the joint canvassing committee made sure that no disputed certificates of canvass were looked into in any thorough manner. The results of the canvass were railroaded through Congress, despite the protestations of Speaker Jose de Venecia to the contrary.
In any event, the Philippine people don’t seem to want to know the truth about what the left-wing Ibon Foundation called “the most corrupt elections in Philippine history.” The fact remains that the business community and the military did not want a Poe presidency, and they did everything possible to thwart the will of the people.
Poe on his part did not help himself by campaigning without a platform of any kind, and refusing to participate in any of the presidential debates.
I hope President Arroyo realizes just how divisive and dirty the May 10 election was, and makes real efforts to heal the nation’s wounds and divisions.
Her plan to hold her inauguration in Cebu City, in a nod to the more than 1 million votes she garnered in the Visayas region, is not very smart. It sends the wrong signal that she is favoring Cebuanos, when she should be signaling that she is the president of ALL Filipinos.
I think that many Filipino voters were willing to look the other way while massive vote rigging took place as they are tired of political wrangling and want a government of action and not mere words.
President Arroyo now has to live up to the high expectations of the Philippine electorate.
High unemployment, flat foreign investment in the country, a steady stream of Filipinos going abroad to work, and continuing communist and Muslim insurgencies are just some of the many problems that will continue to dog Arroyo in the next six years.
I just hope that the opposition will remain vigilant and continue to peacefully protest Arroyo administration actions they don’t agree with.
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