MANILA, 22 February 2005 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday rejected fresh demands for her resignation, saying she was better prepared than others to lead the country through its planned transition to a parliamentary system.
“I believe I am the best person to lead this nation through this transition,” she told a forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.
“I was elected to make difficult decisions and I have made them, not without mistake on my part and certainly not without significant criticisms, but I have the experience of hindsight and I aim to fulfill my term with a steady hand on the helm,” she said.
Arroyo has been hounded by corruption and vote-rigging allegations, which she has denied. In September, she survived three impeachment bids after her allies in the House of Representatives blocked them on a technicality.
When asked yesterday at a foreign correspondents’ forum what could force her to resign amid her political troubles, Arroyo responded: “nothing.”
Opponents have vowed to mass tens of thousands of people to oust Arroyo during the 20th anniversary of the Feb. 25, 1986 “People Power Revolution.”
Arroyo also appeared to reject a call by former President Fidel Ramos, one of her staunchest supporters, for her to make a sacrifice and agree to become a transition president starting in 2007.
“ I doubt if the charter change will result in that,” she said.
Arroyo said charter change, similar to her economic policies, would “unchain our society” and pave the way for economic growth.
“No more need for coups or sham people power in a parliamentary system. Charter change will create greater political certainty,” she said.
Arroyo reiterated that she wished the Constitution would be amended by the middle of the year, but pointed out that she was leaving the matter to Congress.
Arroyo appealed to disgruntled military officers to stop efforts to engineer a coup.
“These adventurists don’t have any justification for what they have been trying to do,” she said.
Yesterday, army and police operatives arrested an escaped army lieutenant who was involved in a failed mutiny in mid-2003.
Military chief Gen. Generoso Senga told reporters that 1st Lt. Lawrence San Juan was arrested in San Felipe town in Batangas province, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Manila.
National police chief Director General Arturo Lomibao said San Juan was arrested with a lawyer and another civilian after leaving a meeting with communist rebels at a farm in Batangas.
The farm was raided by 100 police and soldiers.
San Juan escaped last month from a military detention camp with three other mutineers, and has been giving phone interviews and sending tape messages to the media. The other three remain at large.
“They were monitored to have come from that farm and in fact, when the farm was raided, there was food on the table and apparently, those who were present scampered in different directions,” Lomibao said.
He accused San Juan of plotting an alliance with the New People’s Army, a communist rebel group. The two men arrested with San Juan were put under military custody while investigators prepared a case against them for their links with a fugitive, officials said.
San Juan was flown in handcuffs by helicopter to a military camp in Manila.
In a taped message sent to news organizations last week, San Juan urged citizens to show defiance of President Arroyo’s government by wearing red armbands.
In another radio interview, he claimed that 10 active generals would join a planned coup against Arroyo.
San Juan was among officers who led 300 troops during their occupation of the ritzy Oakwood Hotel and a nearby shopping mall in the capital’s financial district in July 2003. They rigged the area with bombs, but surrendered peacefully after about 20 hours.
Two army-backed “people power” movements ousted two presidents, Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada, Arroyo’s predecessor, in 2001. Arroyo said the international community would not accept another extraconstitutional ouster.
The protests were named after Manila’s Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, or EDSA, where demonstrators gathered.
“The world embraced EDSA 1 in 1986. The world tolerated EDSA 2 in 2001,” Arroyo said.
“The world will not forgive an EDSA 3, but instead would condemn the Philippines as a country whose political system is hopelessly unstable, and the Filipinos as among the finest people in the world but who manage to shoot themselves in the foot,” she said. (With input from Inquirer News Service & AP)
