Joker to GMA: Take a break

It is the Chief Executive who needs a good, restful vacation, not her Cabinet, or so maverick Sen. Joker Arroyo said yesterday.

Arroyo said the touchiness of President Arroyo — no relation of his — at a pulong bayan (town meeting) Wednesday was a telling sign that she is tired.

Arroyo based his statement on reports that the President’s mood swung from jovial to cranky when one man at the pulong bayan asked if he could kiss her. The President warned the men in the audience at that meeting not to attempt to land unwanted kisses on her.

"First, show some respect," the President admonished the man. "Secondly, I am conservative. I do not want to be kissed by any man but my husband."

"The President should take a good and restful vacation," the senator said. "She sounds tired, that is why she has become so onion-skinned. She hasn’t had a vacation since she became President in January 2001 or three and a half years ago."

He also said criticisms of the Cabinet members’ ideas are not criticisms of the President.

"Cabinet members who are criticized should not wail and run — at the first drop of rain — behind the President’s skirt for protection and ask her to defend them," Arroyo said. "If they do that, they do not fit the job description" (of) a Cabinet member.

He recalled the President’s choice of Jose Isidro Camacho for the post of Finance Secretary when she assumed the presidency in 2001. Camacho, he said, is an expert in mega-borrowing.

"True enough, (Camacho) racked up a record huge borrowings — more than any other secretary of finance in the past — to shore up the government’s finances. Thus the borrowings of the three-year Arroyo administration is bigger than the combined borrowings of the Ramos and Estrada administrations for eight years. The data thereon in absolute terms are available in Sen. (Ralph) Recto’s ways and means committee."

He also noted that Camacho resigned late last year and immediately joined the camp of one of the President’s opponents.

"Loyalty and competence (must be) personified in the President’s men," Arroyo said. "The borrowing spree had to stop and the President now asks Congress to raise P80 billion in new taxes to bridge the budget gap. Many legislators have balked at the idea and, as a solution, have asked the President’s financial managers to share the burden by first plugging the tax collection leakages which are so obvious and commonplace."

Arroyo said that these allegedly overworked financial managers are actually in denial.

"They do not want to work to collect more taxes," he said. "They just want new taxes — the easy way out."

"The President, who is the one overworked, ironically, pities them," he added. "The President needs a break from her work before her Cabinet (members) become nervous wrecks."