MANILA - Senator Joker Arroyo said Tuesday that President Benigno Aquino III has achieved something that former dictator President Ferdinand Marcos is notorious for, but this time without having to declare martial law: the control of all three branches of the government "in the guise of transparency."The senator, who served as a key adviser of Aquino’s mother Cory when she was president, said that the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona by the president’s allies in Congress had the “net effect” of President Aquino becoming an autocrat “without having to declare martial law, the way President Marcos did.”  For this, he said, President Aquino is “a genius, more than Marcos.”Showing a diagram to reporters in the Senate, Arroyo explained that there are three branches of the government – the Executive, Legislative (Lower and Upper Houses), and the Judiciary – where Aquino would hold virtual sway if Corona is successfully ousted.“By focusing on the alleged crimes of (former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), then later on, the Chief Justice, (the President has) the people… entertained by that kind of show. What is not known is that the bid for power disguised under the claim of transparency – that is the problem we face now and I don’t know what lies ahead. But, with the impeachment and all that, the government has now won,” Senator Arroyo, who is not related to former president Arroyo, said.The senator, who suffered under the Marcos dictatorship, recalled how in 1972 the former dictator declared Proclamation No. 1081 putting the entire country under martial rule on the claim that such would eradicate the roots of poverty and defeat creeping Communism. “The way I look at it is (Aquino) is a genius more than Marcos. Imagine what he has achieved: Marcos issued Proclamation 1081 and with the aid of the AFP, there was military rule, but here, there’s no proclamation because it did not do anything except to muscle in everyone,” referring to the signing of the impeachment in Congress on Monday.“This time, it took a stroke of a hand for Aquino to control the entire government,” he added.He also believed that the impeachment case against the chief justice is a warning to all constitutionally appointed officials by the past administration — that if you vote against the administration, you will be ousted. “The threat of impeachment would compel members of the judiciary to resign,” Arroyo said. “When that happens, then before long we will have already an Aquino court rather than an Arroyo court.”He said Aquino blatantly violated the 1987 Constitution, thus a “creeping authoritarian rule is now in our midst.” “We have no more Constitution. The Constitutions is not being followed,” Arroyo said.

'Genius' Aquino does a Marcos 'in the guise of transparency' – Joker

MANILA, Philippines (2nd UPDATE) – Former Solicitor General Francisco Chavez filed a second complaint for plunder against former president now Pampanga 2nd District Representative Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with the Department of Justice(DOJ), this time, for the disbursement of some P2.3-billion in public funds for the purchase of farm inputs, including fertilizers

The 31-page complaint includes the more familiar P728-million fertilizer fund scam, plus, a larger P1.7-billion disbursement, also for the Arroyo administration's Ginintuang Masagana Ani Program.

"While ostensibly marketed as funding for the benefit of farmers, the foregoing amounts were actually intended for distribution to several public officials — including mayors, governors, and members of the House of Representatives — who were listed as 'proponents' of projects under the 'Ginintuang Masaganang Ani Program' and who were supposed to use the funds so distributed for the 'purchase of farm inputs' required by their respective projects," the complaint read.

Other respondents in the case include former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn "Jocjoc" Bolante; former agriculture secretary Luis Ramon Lorenzo Jr.; former agriculture assistant secretary Ibarra Poliquit; Mario Relampagos, undersecretary of the Department of Budget and Management(DBM); Nora Oliveros, DBM Bureau-E director; Rose Florendo, Leni Aquino, Jaime Paule and Jane Fabian, alleged "runners" of Bolante.

Respondents were also charged with malversation and/or illegal use of public funds; graft and corruption; and violations of the Omnibus Election Code, Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials; and qualified theft.

Chavez annexed lists containing the names of public officials pertaining to the allocation of the funds.

"Far from serving their lawful purpose, however, the funds were meant to induce these public officials to support respondent GMA's candidacy for, and/or ensure her electoral victory as, President in said public officials' areas of responsibility," the complaint read.

Chavez slammed the timing of the release of the funds — the P728-million on February 3, 2004 or 7 days before the start of the official campaign period for the May 2004 national elections where she ran as President, and the P1.6-billion on February 11, 2004 or just a day before the start of the campaign period — saying this "attests to the real purpose behind the release of the funds."

"Worse, the funds were not — in fact, were never intended to be — utilized for the purpose for which these were allocated in the first place. Rather, the funds were intended to enable the public officials aforementioned to utilize the same not only for their respective political interests, but also, more important, to facilitate the candidacy and/or ensure the victory of respondent GMA," the complaint read.

"Not a single drop of fertilizer was bought. Now is the time for her to realize that she cannot pontificate on good governance. She should have the temerity to do that because look at her trail, it's a trail of unmitigated corruption, pillage and plunder," Chavez said in an interview with reporters.

Chavez alleged that the allocation of a portion of the subject funds to "highly urbanized areas in the National Capital Region where there are no farms to speak of and, consequently, where 'farm inputs' are useless," bolsters the fact that funds "were never intended for any agricultural purpose."

"That the allocation of the funds for ostensibly agricultural purposes was, in reality, an infusion into the political kitty of respondent GMA is reinforced by the fact that the purported 'proponents' of the projects were officials identified and allied with respondent GMA or are supportive of her bid for President during the 2004 elections," the complaint read.

The fact that Arroyo approved the release of the SARO links her to the offense alleged, Chavez said.

Chavez withdrew a similar case he filed with the Ombudsman in May 2004 against respondents so he could file the case with the DOJ.

"These cases had been deliberately set aside only to gather dust in the shelves of the Office of the Ombudsman," Chavez said.

Appended to the complaint were Senate Committee Reports in 2006 and 2009 on the investigations into the disbursements of these funds.

"The Committees recommend that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must be held accountable [for] the mismanagement of the fertilizer fund and take it upon herself to institute measures to correct the flaws in her administration… It bears knowing that a matter of testimonies adduced during the hearings were that the fund was indeed used to assure her victory in the 2004 elections," a portion of Committee Report No. 54 of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food and Committee on Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations dated March 1, 2006 read.

While Senate Committee Report No. 254 by the Committee on Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations dated February 26, 2009 read: "This is a tale of how a group of people — like a wolf pack, was able to rob the government blind. This is a story, so shocking to the conscience, that would result in gross injustice (of) institutions, like the Ombudsman, continue to turn a blind eye to clear acts of plunder and money laundering by powerful and influential government officials and their pack of wolves. This wolf pack did not only rob the government. Worse, it plundered a vulnerable sector in this country, the farmers. They did this during the election year of 2004.

Respondents have yet to release copies of the new plunder complaint.

Chavez's first plunder complaint against Arroyo was in connection with the alleged misuse of millions in Overseas Workers Welfare Administration(OWWA) funds in 2004.

Arroyo faces another plunder complaint before the DOJ in connection with the sale of the old Iloilo airport.

GMA faces plunder rap for P2.3-B agri program

IN his acceptance speech during the 81ST Oscar awards held a few months after the US presidential inauguration, best actor Sean Penn, a known supporter of President Barack Obama did not, like many others, gush over the first black President.

Penn said something more remarkable: I am glad that we have elected into the White House an elegant man.

This subject about elegance came to mind during the hearings on the Senate committee report on the allegedly anomalous C-5 extension project, when the supporters and detractors of Sen. Manny Villar engaged themselves in verbal exchanges that made some viewers cringe in disgust.

The august chamber, others commented, had been so degraded that if they were alive today, Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Taada, Jose Diokno, Gerardo Roxas, Benigno Aquino Jr. and even Ferdinand Marcos (may all their souls rest in peace), to name only a few, wouldnt be caught dead in it.

These were elegant men. In manner, dress and language they were elegant. They were elegant even in anger and never stooped to the gutter, at least not in full view of the public.

What happened to this tradition of legislative elegance? Whats with our present set of lawmakers?

Day by day the news, both print and broadcast, carry almost nothing of consequence except the depressing figures of job layoffs and unemployment, maltreated OFWs forced to come home to return to the misery and poverty they tried to lift their families from. Which now seems to be much more difficult to do with the rising prices of such basic commodities as flour and sugar, and now, water and electricity.

More than two months after the Maguindanao massacre, its victims seem to be still far from attaining justice, while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is driving half of the populace half-crazy with her boast that the next president will be lucky to inherit her legacy.

And as if these were not enough, we have the much more depressing soundbites of the bickerings among the members of the Senate, all sound and fury signifying nothing but bad manners and unpassed vital pieces of legislation.

There are exceptions, of course.

There is, for example, one of my favorite persons, party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, now candidate for senator, who must have been a Tausug princess in a past life (I have never seen the sablay worn more fittingly as a fashion statement), in her response to a senator of the land, Miriam Defensor-Santiago who once referred to her as an anonymous insect.

Calmly, in the relaxed manner of speech that I believe is a distinct trait of true nobility (reminiscent of Princess Tarhata Kiram), Baraquel countered: Hindi ako insekto. Obviously, akoy isang tao. At ganoon din ang turing ko sa kanya. (I am not an insect. Obviously, I am a human being. And that is how I regard her, too.)

But then perhaps this sad state of affairs is not entirely the fault of our honorable lawmakers. For how else can you cope with such scandals as Hello Garci, the NBN-ZTE scam, the fertilizer scam, the schoolchildrens noodles scam, the railway scam, the road scam, the highway scam, the Maguindanao firearms scam (we are not there yet) and the whole gang of 40 thieves unleashed on the landscape by this administration?

Surely you cannot make them see the utter grossness, crassness and shamelessness of their plunder with the language and manners of Jane Austen.

And that, one can surmise, is the crux of our problem with elegance. Which is that we are caught in such extraordinary times, one that goes beyond our collective sense of decency when the most hated person to ever occupy Malacaang established what is probably the most hated officialdom in the history of Philippine governance.

(Which is so unfair to the many decent men and women whose only misfortune was to join this administration. There was, for instance, the late much-liked and well-loved Cerge Remonde who had to cover up such things as breast implants and then, red-faced, to have to uncover them the next day.)

None and nothing can be better proof of this than the spectacle of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez who, at her own press conference last year held at the height of calls for her impeachment for sitting on such cases as those enumerated earlier in this column, asked the media to color the hair of former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman (who has a fetish for a lock of colored fake hair pinned to her own), after which she laughed heartily at her own colorless, tasteless joke. Or cattiness.

And not to be forgotten is Ms Arroyos son, Rep. Mikey Arroyo, who with such comical arrogance commented in the aftermath of the famous Le Cirque lobster and steak dinner: Oo, libre. E ano namang problema nila kung libre? (Yes, the dinner was free. So whats their problem if it was free?) Close your eyes and imagine a member of the US Congress or the British Parliament saying anything close to that.

Now we have reason to dread the coming elections, because aside from the usual guns, goons and gold, we will once again witness the mudslinging that is as much a part of our election history as the so-called 3Gs.

In fact, it has begun. Although it is being done in a more subtle but underhanded way that is no less sarcastic, no less biting. Listen to Manny Villars ads and speeches about the experiences of the mahirap like him as opposed to herederos like Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas.

I wonder to what levels of inelegance the presidential candidates will lower themselves to in the heat of todays scheduled debate at the UP Theater. Might as well go and listen for ourselves.

( Comments to rubaiyat19@yahoo.com )

Elegance

In his acceptance speech during the 81ST Oscar awards held a few months after the US presidential inauguration, best actor Sean Penn, a known supporter of President Barack Obama did not, like many others, gush over the first black President.

Penn said something more remarkable: I am glad that we have elected into the White House an elegant man.

This subject about elegance came to mind during the hearings on the Senate committee report on the allegedly anomalous C-5 extension project, when the supporters and detractors of Sen. Manny Villar engaged themselves in verbal exchanges that made some viewers cringe in disgust.

The august chamber, others commented, had been so degraded that if they were alive today, Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Taada, Jose Diokno, Gerardo Roxas, Benigno Aquino Jr. and even Ferdinand Marcos (may all their souls rest in peace), to name only a few, wouldnt be caught dead in it.

These were elegant men. in manner, dress and language they were elegant. They were elegant even in anger and never stooped to the gutter, at least not in full view of the public.

What happened to this tradition of legislative elegance? Whats with our present set of lawmakers?

Day by day the news, both print and broadcast, carry almost nothing of consequence except the depressing figures of job layoffs and unemployment, maltreated OFWs forced to come home to return to the misery and poverty they tried to lift their families from. Which now seems to be much more difficult to do with the rising prices of such basic commodities as flour and sugar, and now, water and electricity.

More than two months after the Maguindanao massacre, its victims seem to be still far from attaining justice, while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is driving half of the populace half-crazy with her boast that the next president will be lucky to inherit her legacy.

And as if these were not enough, we have the much more depressing soundbites of the bickerings among the members of the Senate, all sound and fury signifying nothing but bad manners and unpassed vital pieces of legislation.

There are exceptions, of course.

There is, for example, one of my favorite persons, party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, now candidate for senator, who must have been a Tausug princess in a past life (I have never seen the sablay worn more fittingly as a fashion statement), in her response to a senator of the land, Miriam Defensor-Santiago who once referred to her as an anonymous insect.

Calmly, in the relaxed manner of speech that I believe is a distinct trait of true nobility (reminiscent of Princess Tarhata Kiram), Baraquel countered: Hindi ako insekto. Obviously, akoy isang tao. at ganoon din ang turing ko sa kanya. (I am not an insect. Obviously, I am a human being. And that is how I regard her, too.)

But then perhaps this sad state of affairs is not entirely the fault of our honorable lawmakers. for how else can you cope with such scandals as Hello Garci, the NBN-ZTE scam, the fertilizer scam, the schoolchildrens noodles scam, the railway scam, the road scam, the highway scam, the Maguindanao firearms scam (we are not there yet) and the whole gang of 40 thieves unleashed on the landscape by this administration?

Surely you cannot make them see the utter grossness, crassness and shamelessness of their plunder with the language and manners of Jane Austen.

And that, one can surmise, is the crux of our problem with elegance. Which is that we are caught in such extraordinary times, one that goes beyond our collective sense of decency when the most hated person to ever occupy Malacaang established what is probably the most hated officialdom in the history of Philippine governance.

(Which is so unfair to the many decent men and women whose only misfortune was to join this administration. there was, for instance, the late much-liked and well-loved Cerge Remonde who had to cover up such things as breast implants and then, red-faced, to have to uncover them the next day.)

None and nothing can be better proof of this than the spectacle of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez who, at her own press conference last year held at the height of calls for her impeachment for sitting on such cases as those enumerated earlier in this column, asked the media to color the hair of former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman (who has a fetish for a lock of colored fake hair pinned to her own), after which she laughed heartily at her own colorless, tasteless joke. Or cattiness.

And not to be forgotten is Ms Arroyos son, Rep. Mikey Arroyo, who with such comical arrogance commented in the aftermath of the famous Le Cirque lobster and steak dinner: Oo, libre. E ano namang problema nila kung libre? (Yes, the dinner was free. so whats their problem if it was free?) Close your eyes and imagine a member of the US Congress or the British Parliament saying anything close to that.

Now we have reason to dread the coming elections, because aside from the usual guns, goons and gold, we will once again witness the mudslinging that is as much a part of our election history as the so-called 3Gs.

In fact, it has begun. Although it is being done in a more subtle but underhanded way that is no less sarcastic, no less biting. Listen to Manny Villars ads and speeches about the experiences of the mahirap like him as opposed to herederos like Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas.

I wonder to what levels of inelegance the presidential candidates will lower themselves to in the heat of todays scheduled debate at the UP Theater. Might as well go and listen for ourselves.

( Comments to rubaiyat19@yahoo.com )

Kris-Crossing Mindanao : Elegance / Antonio J. Montalvan II