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Arroyo’s 7 years inflicted 7 curses on RP - FSGO


MANILA, Philippines — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s seven years in Malacanang has inflicted seven curses on the nation, a group of former senior officials from five administrations said on Friday. In its own State of the Nation Address (SONA) with the theme: “A Stolen, Not a Strong, Republic," the group called Former Senior Government Officials (FSGO) said that since Arroyo’s assumption to office in 2001, 12 million Filipinos were added to the already teeming numbers of the country’s population, “yet the vital capacity of the country to feed them has been left grossly neglected." “Arroyo promised the people a strong republic, but what she gave the Filipinos is a stolen republic instead," said the FSGO’s “real" state of the nation read by industrialist and former Sen. Vicente Paterno during a press conference at the De La Salle University in Manila. Paterno, who was minister of industry under the late president Ferdinand Marcos, presented the report along with Karina Constantino-David, recently retired Civil Service Commission (CSC) chairwoman under Arroyo. The FSGO’s other members include former Cabinet and other key officials under former Presidents Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada. The FSOG report warned that Arroyo, who is set to deliver her SONA on Monday, will blame global causes for higher food and fuel prices and site how she is spending the people’s money supposedly to alleviate the hardships of a suffering people. But the real score, it said, is that Arroyo only brought forth the following curses upon the nation: ● the curse of a country unable to feed its own people due to gross neglect of agriculture and rural development; ● the curse of the worsening poverty and increasing disparity between rich and poor due to economic mismanagement that ignores the needs of the many to serve the interests of the few; ● the curse of deteriorating basic social services essential to the survival and welfare of the people; ● the curse of a national government gripped by a metastatic cancer of corruption; ● the curse of wanton abuse of presidential prerogatives; ● the curse of an illegitimate president; and ● the curse of a nation robbed of its dignity, unity and future. “Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has used the powers of the presidency so irresponsibly and selfishly that her administration has either inflicted, or worsened, or did nothing about, these seven curses that gravely enfeeble our nation," said the FSGO report. It faulted the Arroyo regime of trying to undermine the 1987 Constitution, which “seeks a society in which exist a more equitable distribution of opportunities, income and wealth, a sustained increase in the amount of goods and services produced by the nation for the benefit of the people and expanding productivity as key to raising the qualify of life for all, especially the under-privileged." “The past seven years of this administration have seen repeated, persistent and gross violation of this Constitutional mandate. The willful and systematic violation has harmed the Filipino nation and we have identified at least seven curses that harmed us in the past, harm us today and will continue to harm us in the future," it said. Rice shortage The FSGO noted that in her very first SONA in 2001, Arroyo made rice self-sufficiency a priority and even held office at the Department of Agriculture in order to make sure her programs were implemented. She repeated the promise of food on every table in her 2003 SONA. “Yet, in every year throughout her administration thus far, the country was importing increasing quantities of rice every year that this year the Philippines achieved an odd milestone in rice self-sufficiency, our becoming the world’s largest rice importer." It said the Arroyo administration has committed itself every year to implement the Agricultural and fisheries modernization act, but in the past seven years, the Department of Agriculture never got the P17 billion in incremental funds mandated under the law. “Instead of extending adequate funding, the president let loose in the Department of Agriculture people who waste and steal whatever limited funding there is. People like Joc-joc Bolante who, as agriculture undersecretary, was accused of masterminding the diversion of P728 million in fertilizer funds to ghost foundations and urban congressional districts, thereby denying farmers the benefit of this vital farm input," it said. It noted that the country’s agricultural trade deficit, that was already just short of a billion dollars in 2000 ($967 million in 2000), ballooned to more than one and a half billion dollars in 2006 ($1,535 million in 2006). “Each year we needed to create 1 million new jobs in agriculture and fisheries, but we were able to realize these additional 1 million new jobs in seven years. In 2006, less than 2 percent of total direct foreign investments went to agriculture and, in 2007, only 6 percent of all outstanding loans financed agricultural projects," it said. Unemployment It said that even before the current worsening global economic conditions and despite last year’s much ballyhooed record of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate, the country has 2.9 million unemployed workers and another 7 million workers looking for more work to supplement their incomes. “Some new jobs created in 2007 were good jobs, such as in call centers and their support services and real estate activities and in teaching. But many more new jobs were in sari-sari stores, bagsakan, namamasukan, katulong, labandera, househelp, trisikad, padyak-cycle, colorum and FX transport. Apart from unemployment and under-employment, the quality of available jobs in our economy has significantly deteriorated. The loss of jobs is further abetted by rising incidence and volume of smuggling, possible only by those with political connecftions to the administrations," the report said. A major side effect of the serious failure in job creation, which should be a major policy concern of all government policy, is that poverty incidence increased to 26.9 percent in 2000 from 24.4 percent in 2004 and this comprises 4.6 million poor families or 27.6 million poor individuals, it said. Less for education The FSGO said education, which could rescue poor families from the poverty trap, has suffered due to severe under-spending by government. “While enrollment grows at 2.5 percent each year, the education budget grows at only 2 percent in real terms. While the Estrada administration with its more constrained budget spent P5,830 per student from 1998 to 2001 (in 2000 peso terms), the Arroyo administration, with its supposedly stronger fiscal condition, spent only an average of P5,304 per student from 2001 to 2006. “The Philippines remains one of the lowest spenders on education in Southeast Asia. Today, the Philippines, which was a leader in our region in the nineties in education-for-all indicators, has fallen in ranking below such countries as Indonesia, Mongolia and Vietnam," the report said. Foreign trips, Miriam Santiago The FSG0 noted that while homes, farms and businesses in the country were taking precautions from storms, Arroyo, her husband and sons together with a specially selected delegation were packing their gowns and suits for what is always a great treat: visiting friends and relations in the US. “While Arroyo was hosting cocktails for Senator Miriam Santiago’s candidacy to join International Court of Justice, Ilonggos were suffering strong winds, heavy rain, flooding and the fear of dying in the elements. “While GMA (Arroyo’s initials) was enjoying the 50-minute meeting with President Bush, that included laughing at a cultural stereotype joke about Filipinos being cooks and maids, sirens were sounding in Iloilo warning that rising flood waters are no joke. “While the president’s staff were chasing democratic party presidential candidate Barack Obama all over the US for a precious meeting, which eventually resulted in a brief telephone call, victims in Iloilo, Capiz and Aklan were chasing after rice, food and water in many damaged towns and barangays short of supplies for their essential needs," the FSG0 said. The FSOG said that while many Ilonggo families were staying on their roofs shivering in the cold and gray daylight and subsisting on whatever food some neighbor or friend could share, the country’s government officials were occupying 30 rooms at Willard Hotel in Washington DC at between $300 to $5,000 a night and having dinners at $400 to $500 per plate. “And as hungry, dirty and wet homeowners of farms and subdivisions all over Panay Island confronted their devastated neighborhoods caked in mud and strewn with debris, many of our highest officials from Congress and the Cabinet were rushing to ringside seats at the Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas, with the certainty of hitting the shows, gaming tables and slot machines. “It grieves us greatly to remember that authoritarian leaders like Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and Russian president Vladimir Putin each cut short their respective state visits abroad and returned when their countries were hit by calamities. Yet our president did not see it fit to do the same thing for her people that the Pakistani and Russian presidents did for theirs," the FSG0 said. So corrupt The FSOGH also noted that corruption “has become pervasive, persistent, prolific" in the country but instead of fighting it, Arroyo “has become its prime practitioner and protector." “She corrupted the already weak electoral process. She corrupted the already diminished civil service. She corrupted the already politicized public investment and fiscal programs," the report lamented. The Philippines has been ranked by the World Bank in its 2007 report as the most corrupt among ten of East Asia’s leading economies, even worse that Indonesia and we are among the most corrupt one-fourth of 212 countries in the world. “By committing crimes without punishment, abusing power without restraint and violating rules with impunity yet suffering no adverse consequence, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has turned our most valued principle of public office is a public trust into a perversion. Public office is a key to whatever you can get away with," the FSG0 said. Arroyo’s legacies The FSOG said the Hello Garci scandal, the Joc-joc Bolante case, the National Broadband Network deal were just among the legacy of President Arroyo. “Its bad enough that the abuse of presidential prerogatives in the administration of government hobbles the effectiveness and responsiveness of GMA’s administration. Unfortunately, it also damages future administrations by destroying the norms, standards and practices essential for a stable and well-functioning professional bureaucracy," it said. It noted that nearly 60 percent of the 4,000 positions from directors to undersecretaries belonging to the career executive service are occupied by Arroyo appointees who do not possess eligibility in the career executive service. “She has appointed more than 80 assistant secretaries and under secretaries whose positions are not even provided by law. She has usurped the power of government Boards, Councils and Commissions to appoint their officials by abusing the courtesy previously extended to the president using so-called desire letters which essentially intimidate these collective bodies to elect her chosen ones. She has even directly violated the law by such maneuvers as placing a quasi-judicial body like the national telecommunications commissions under the control and supervision of the DOTC secretary," the FSGO said. What needs to be done With all these curses inflicted by Arroyo, the FSGO vowed to continue to work for the “building of institutions that will stand solidly for the country’s interests and resistant to the corrupt and crooked." “We will persevere in working with our political institutions as our instruments for reform and justice, not parties to anomalies and scandals. We will continue to build a government that mobilizes the nation to greater achievements and no a mere machinery for delivering patronage to favored supporters. We will keep looking for a presidency that fights the enemies of social justice and is a reliable platform for serving those who have less in life that they may have more in law, not this one temporarily in Malacanang fighting only its critics and serving only self, family, relations and cronies," the report read. The FSGO was confident of achieveing its goal, “even under the highly corrupt administration of Arroyo," with the help of “informed citizens, free media, a robust civil society, communities of decent and civic-minded people, allies of good governance all over the world and throughout the country." “We will build institutions that stand solidly for the nation’s interest and resistant to the corrupt and crooked. We can re-imagine the nation as something far better and more capable than the one that the President will paint in her SONA this Monday. We can find deep and enduring ties and connections with millions of other Filipinos and sympathetic foreign friends and resources to the effort to ultimately realize this re-imagined vision of our nation. This is how the Filipino people will prevail over this current patch of bad governance. This administration may have stolen the Republic, but it will not rob us of our hopes," it said. The FSGO said that in the history of Filipinos, periods of productive seven years marked the birth of the country as a free nation. “Seven years of publishing La Solidaridad laid the intellectual foundations for imagining a sovereign Filipino nation. Jose Rizal, after writing and publishing Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, returned to the Philippines, where, within seven years, he was executed at Bagumbayan and thereby triggered the Philippine revolution," the FSGO said. It noted that for seven years after Rizal’s execution, Christian Filipinos revolted against Spain, the Spanish-American war was fought, the Philippine-American war raged and Muslim Filipinos fought the American occupation of their land. “These four wars over a seven-year period defined the country that we are today. Our founding fathers have shown that so much can be achieved in seven years," it said. - GMANews.TV
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