MANILA, 19 October 2007 — Corruption has become so widespread that it has eroded public trust in government and should now be considered a top security concern, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s own top security official said yesterday.
National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzalez said he would urge Arroyo’s Cabinet to regard corruption and the country’s chaotic political rivalries as top security threats that impede economic development and should be handled with a more comprehensive solution.
“I’m raising corruption as a national security threat,” Gonzalez said. “It has become the system in the country.”
He said that while the magnitude of corruption would not likely threaten the stability of Arroyo’s government, it has eroded public trust in her administration and in crucial institutions like the Commission on Elections.
Gonzalez also said the commission should be revamped “from the janitor to the top” to bring back its integrity before crucial village elections this month.
Leftist activists and lawmakers said the best option for Arroyo was to resign.
Hundreds of activists began a caravan in the national capital yesterday to dramatize their indignation over the persistent scandals.
Rep. Crispin Beltran, who exposed earlier this month another alleged bribery attempt by the president’s partymates, said Arroyo “cannot evade accountability for the bribery in the Palace the same way she cannot evade responsibility for the series of extrajudicial killings.”
“The fact of the matter is, corruption is deep-seated in the incumbent administration and the highest executive of the land has full knowledge of its workings and practice,” Beltran said, citing the bribery allegation surrounding the controversial national broadband network deal between the government and the ZTE Corp of China.
He aid there are no “legal justifications or moral excuses” for the money allegedly handed out to the officials after a meeting with Arroyo at the Palace last week.
“President Arroyo should resign. The fraudulence and hypocrisy of her so-called fight against corruption has been fully exposed,” he said.
Confirmation by a number of the officials who accepted the cash — between P200,000 to P500,000 each — has triggered accusations that the administration has been buying the loyalty of allies in the face of renewed attempts to impeach Arroyo.
Beltran himself claimed he had been offered a bribe to endorse what the opposition describes as a deliberately weak impeachment complaint filed against Arroyo with the House of Representatives.
House Speaker Jose de Venecia, meanwhile, called for an inquiry into the alleged cash gifts and for the president to reorganize her Cabinet to win back the people’s trust. “There must be a fairly large-scale and credible overhaul,” said de Venecia, whose relationship with the president has been strained since his son alleged a telecoms deal with a Chinese company ZTE was overpriced to fund kickbacks to officials.
De Venecia, who has played a decisive role in protecting Arroyo from two impeachment bids, admitted he was considering cutting his ties with the president after her allies launched a separate bribery inquiry against him.
The controversy is the latest in a series of scandals facing Arroyo and analysts say a split with de Venecia, who controls a 95-strong block in the lower house, could be risky for the president, who is facing a fresh impeachment complaint.
At least 80 signatures are needed for an impeachment complaint to progress to the opposition-dominated Senate.
Arroyo currently dominates the lower house. “She is in danger because the solid majority that is behind her is showing some cracks,” said Earl Parreno of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms.
De Venecia said the ethics panel of the lower house would summon lawmakers who claimed to have received 500,000 pesos ($11,300) each after a meeting with the president at her office last week.
Arroyo had ordered a “quiet” inquiry into the bribery allegations but has not commented on the issue.
The opposition has said the payments amounted to bribery since, at the meetings, Arroyo discussed the impeachment complaint against her. (With reports by Inquirer News Service & agencies)
Her political opponents in the two houses of Congress have said she should resign, but her spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said the president intended to finish her term in June 2010.
Adding to the pressure, a group of powerful Roman Catholic bishops scheduled a news conference on Friday to demand Arroyo end corruption in her government. De Venecia told reporters he would send Arroyo a letter next week seeking a “moral revolution” to win back the trust of the dominant Catholic Church and the people.
“I am not without sin,” he said. “I am 70 and I want to leave a good legacy for my country, for my children and for my grandchildren. We must do something to lead out our country from corruption, despair and poverty.” Since August, Arroyo’s government has been on the defensive, avoiding Senate inquiries into political killings, election fraud and corruption in government contracts.
Last month, her husband was named in a kickback scandal that forced his friend — the head of the elections agency — to quit his job.
Last week, an official in Arroyo’s political party, Kampi, was fired after he allegedly offered bribes to opposition lawmakers to support a weak impeachment complaint against her, thereby shielding her for at least a year from similar motions.
