GMA owes me nothing — Reyes

Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes denied reports that President Arroyo cannot sack him because she owes him her post at the helm of government.

"It was the people who put her in power, not I," Reyes said in a press statement yesterday, adding that "I have never given anybody the impression that the President owes me anything."

Reyes met with members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) at the Diamond Hotel in Manila, where he said Mrs. Arroyo "can get rid of me any time. I’m not indispensable. Many other people can do this job."

The EDSA II uprising unseated former President Joseph Estrada and ended with the swearing in of then Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as President.

Reyes, then Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff, withdrew his support from Estrada and supported the people’s clamor for Estrada’s ouster in an effort to prevent bloodshed and chaos.

Despite the accusations leveled against Reyes by junior military officers who sought the President’s resignation as well as Reyes’, Mrs. Arroyo remained firm in her decision not to sack the defense chief.

"They want Angie Reyes to resign so that they can weaken me," the President said at the Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC) President’s night last week. "I will not fall into that trap."

"She is not beholden to me," Reyes said of the President. "The people put her there. I’m just part of the people."

The junior officers and the enlisted men who joined the failed July 27 mutiny in Ayala Center booby-trapped the country’s premier commercial and business district with explosives and occupied Oakwood for 22 hours, demanding the resignations of the President and her Cabinet and, more specifically, the resignations of Reyes and then Intelligence Service of the AFP (ISAFP) chief Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus.

Corpus resigned last week and was replaced by Maj. Gen. Pedro Cabuay.

The mutineers’ leaders accused senior military officials, including Reyes, of corruption and selling government weapons and ammunition to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the New People’s Army (NPA), and the Abu Sayyaf.

They also accused Reyes and Corpus of complicity in the deadly bombings in Davao City. The Davao attacks, the mutineers said, were meant to frame the MILF as a terrorist group and get more US funding for the Arroyo administration’s anti-terrorism campaign.

Bombings in Manila were also planned in a bid to extend Mrs. Arroyo’s presidency through martial law and the recent escape of self-confessed Indonesian terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi was "essential to this operation," the mutineers alleged.

"They will do this through bombings in Metro Manila which they will blame on other groups," said Gambala.

Reyes earlier expressed confidence he would be cleared of allegations that he and Corpus were responsible for recent bombings in the south.

"I am not the mad bomber of Davao City. I am not the merchant of death who sells weapons to kill our own soldiers," he told reporters in an interview.

"The truth and everything will surface" in an investigation into the failed mutiny to be conducted by an independent commission formed by the President, Reyes said.

In March, a bomb went off outside the terminal of Davao’s international airport, killing 22 people and wounding 150 others.

The following month, another bomb attack at the city’s Sasa wharf killed 16 people and wounded dozens.

The government blamed Muslim rebels for the attacks and have filed criminal charges against MILF leader Hashim Salamat and other rebel leaders.

The MILF denied responsibility and has formally denounced terrorism.

The 12,500-strong MILF has been waging an insurrection since the 1980s to establish an independent Islamic state in impoverished Mindanao for the Philippines’ Muslim minority.

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who is leading the investigation into the bombings, and North Cotabato Gov. Manuel Piñol, whose province is infested with MILF rebels, doubt Reyes and Corpus were involved in the attacks.