Diarrhea of the Mouth
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A day after Hacienda Luisita Chief Operating Officer Atty Fernando Cojuangco stopped an inch short of
calling his cousin Noynoy Aquino a liar, the Liberal Party presidential candidate issues another election
promise, this time directed at lameduck President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
He is contemplating on a PCGG type of probed body that he said went after the ill-gotten wealth of former
President Marcos.
This analogous body could have very well come from LP elderman Jovito Salonga, former PCGG chair. Poor
Noynoy just went hook, line and sinker with the shallow idea. The PCGG is a failed model of governance in
our history. It barely recovered anything and before it became serious at its work, it succumbed into
becoming a beehive of corruption itself with Steve Salonga, Jovy's son himself, as broker.
Next it tends to perpetuate the spirit of cannibalistic and vindictive politics that her mother Cory was very
much known for. She was so obsessed running after Marcos, she hardly did anything else. In fact she
dropped the ball on the Paranaque Spillway and that is why we had the Ondoy aftermath. She mothballed
the Bataan Nuclear Plant and the Masinloc and Calaca Coal-fired Plants and that is why from 1988 to 92,
Luzon ran into brownouts that lasted as long as 12 hours a day, and up to this day we have these rotating
brownouts to this day.
There are already about 20 live cases against Gloria Arroyo that the late Marlene Esperat and others have
already filed pertaining to the fertilizer scam. Blue Ribbon Committee Chairman Dick Gordon has already
endorsed to the Ombudsman the Senate's findings on the fertilizer scam and the ZTE scandal. These and
many more that are already lodged in various prosecutorial fora simpy renders this idea of Noynoy
superfluous.
I mean Noynoy crows about a jueteng investigation that has not even led to a report. So what? How many
reclusion perpetua does he want anyway? The minimum of one life sentence is enough to put Gloria and
Mike to jail for the rest of their lives.
Noynoy does not have to belabor this issue. If the present justice system was able to can Joseph Estrada, it
is even easier to convict Gloria and Mike because the cases are already in their proper prosecutorial venues
just waiting for GMA to lose her presidential immunity at the end of June 2010 as replacement is sworn into
office.
Nando Cojuangco, Hacienda Luisita COO has been quoted by New York Times last Sunday saying that the
Cojuangco family has "no intention of giving up the land or the sugar business," contradicting earlier
pronouncements of Noynoy that he will distribute the 6,000 hectare property back to the farmers and
azucarera workers within five years.
Anything else after that is sheer diarrhea of the mouth.
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Aquino: Body to probe Arroyo
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By Philip Tubeza
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 15, 2010
MANILA, Philippines—If elected president, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III Monday said one of his first acts
in office would be to set up a commission that would investigate the various scandals that had engulfed
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“We want to set up an office or commission that will create a mechanism that would provide closure to all
the issues surrounding this current administration,” Aquino said in an interview over GMA Channel 7’s
Unang Hirit.
The Liberal Party standard-bearer said the commission would be modeled after the Presidential
Commission on Good Government that went after the ill-gotten wealth of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos
and his cronies.
“If there is a crime, someone should pay. There should be a mechanism so that there would be closure for
items like ‘Hello Garci,’ the fertilizer fund scam and ZTE. There should be focus on this,” Aquino said.
He said the commission “should make sure that there would be no technicalities that would cause more
and more delays in resolving these cases.”
He cited as an example the Senate inquiry into the alleged involvement of First Gentleman Jose Miguel
“Mike” Arroyo, his son Juan Miguel and brother Iggy—both congressmen—in “jueteng,” an illegal numbers
game.
Sen. Manuel Villar, the Nacionalista Party presidential candidate in the May 10 elections, has claimed credit
for mounting the jueteng investigation, Aquino said.
“It turns out there was not even a report about it after all those hearings,” Aquino said, ostensibly referring to
speculation that Villar was secretly aligned with the Arroyos.
“We now have no (report) to use as basis for the filing of charges,” he said.
Advisory council
Aquino also said that he would convene an advisory council to be composed of representatives from the
three branches of government—the executive, legislature and judiciary—to reform the country’s justice
system.
“We should improve the delivery of justice so that it would not take six years, at each level of the judiciary, to
resolve cases and that the conviction rate of only 18 percent would be improved,” he said. “We will try to
make sure that it would not take decades to resolve cases.”
Aquino said he would also set up a group that would study whether there was a need to change the
Constitution. “We want to know if there is a public clamor for that. That is what we are going to do in our first
hundred days,” he said.
Palace: Scandals settled
Reacting to Aquino’s plan, deputy presidential spokesperson Gary Olivar told reporters that the Liberal Party
presidential candidate “is perfectly entitled to put together whatever kind of agenda he believes is
appropriate for the country.”
“(But) Senator Aquino first has to get elected before he can implement this agenda,” Olivar added.
“Do we investigate the sins of the past or do we continue what has been achieved in the past and keep on
moving the country forward? That is his choice to make and if this is the choice he is offering to voters and
we trust that the voters will make their respective decisions accordingly,” he said.
Olivar said the Palace had always maintained that these controversies “were already properly heard and
properly settled through available due process.”
Villar’s spokesperson, Gilbert Remulla, said that if the Nacionalista Party candidate won, Ms Arroyo would
be investigated properly and that cases would be filed against her.
“The next administration will not be lacking in cases that will be filed against Gloria Arroyo,” said Remulla,
who is running for a Senate seat. “She will surely have her day in court.” With reports from Christine O.
Avendaño and Nikko Dizon
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