BOSTON – President Aquino believes his predecessor, former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is no different from the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, particularly in “bastardizing” the way government is run.
“Starting in 2001, however, my predecessor, instead of learning the lessons of martial law, seemingly adopted Mr. Marcos’ handbook of how to abuse the democratic process,” he told students and faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government here.
Arroyo served as Philippine chief executive for nine years until 2010, the second president to have served an extended term, next only to former president Marcos who was first elected in 1965 until he was ousted by a people power revolt in February 1986.
“At the end of her regime, our people were so apathetic to all the scandals and issues affecting her, and government’s inability to effect change, that the overwhelming ambition of so many was to leave the country,” Aquino said in a speech at the Institute of Politics.
This is why, according to him, “an estimated 10 million of our countrymen reside abroad” to work so that they could send their children to school and build their own house, or simply to improve their lives.
“In 2010, our aspirations were summed up in a campaign slogan: Eliminating corruption would eliminate poverty. To do so would make right all our systems and institutions that were so wrongly tarnished and abused,” said.
GMA, Corona and JPE
Aquino also claimed that the detention of Arroyo and opposition Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. now facing plunder and graft charges, is among the greatest achievements of his administration’s fight against corruption.
It was the first time he publicly cited the incarceration of Enrile, Estrada and Revilla for plunder, which he had never mentioned, even in his lengthy State of the Nation Address last July 28.
Aquino has been trying to get the Senate and the House of Representatives to join him in his fight against the judiciary, even attempting to modify the definition of savings in the budget, apart from impeachment attempts against the SC justices.
The same is true with the impeachment of former chief justice Renato Corona in May 2012.
“Our people dared to dream, and acted on that dream by entrusting to me a mandate: To undo the corrupt, broken-down government that Filipinos had once accepted as the norm, and thus turn it into an effective and efficient government working to uplift the country.”