PIMENTEL DOUBTS WHETHER GMA WILL DELIVER A CREDIBLE SONA

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today expressed doubts whether President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will come out with a state of the nation address that the Filipino people will believe in given her record of broken promises.

Pimentel said that year after year since ascending to the presidency in 200l, Mrs. Arroyo has pledged to strengthen the economy through investments, lick the unemployment problem, reduce poverty, eliminate the insurgency and terrorism problem, eradicate graft and corruption, improve the human rights situation, upgrade the educational system and balance the national budget.

However, he said none of these goals has been achieved, the Filipino people are worse off than before and the global competitiveness of the Philippines in practically all fields of nation-building has drastically dropped under the nine-year old Arroyo presidency.

"If I have this discouraging assessment of her administration, it is because her public pronouncements do not dovetail with what she is doing. Simply speaking, I don't think her SONA will be any different from her past SONAs characterized by her attempt to deceive the people and conceal her failures," the minority leader said.

He said the credibility of President Arroyo has been so eroded that her net satisfaction rating has reached a dismal negative 3l percent in the second quarter survey of the Social Weather Stations. No political leader can effectively govern with that rock bottom popularity level.

Deploring that the administration continues to peddle lies instead of showing signs of repentance and self-reform, Pimentel said who will believe the statement of Press Secretary Cerge Remonde that National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales's espousal of a transition government with Mrs. Arroyo a transition president is entirely his own and the Chief Executive has nothing to do about it.

He said if the proposed transition government does not have Mrs. Arroyo's approval, why has she not restrained Secretary Gonzales from pursuing it since he started floating the idea early this year.

Pimentel said the envisioned transition government jibes with the administration's plan to amend the Constitution to allow President Arroyo to keep herself in power beyond her legal term.

He said the establishment of a transition government is patently unconstitutional and anathema to the people because it will mean doing away with the 2010 elections, disregarding the system of presidential succession enshrined in the Constitution, and worse, declaring an emergency or dictatorial rule.

"They (Malacañang people) keep on denying any involvement in a plan for a transition government, but a lot of people who seem in the know keep on talking about it," Pimentel said.

He said former lawyer Avelino Cruz, former defense secretary and chief legal counsel of Mrs. Arroyo would not have warned of an administration plan to impose emergency rule if he did not have any factual basis for it.

Pimentel said the administration's claim that it has succeeded in attaining food security for the country, as mentioned in its newspaper ads, is belied by the falling agricultural productivity and the recent importation of l.4 million metric tons of rice from Vietnam.

He strongly doubted whether the administration will be able to forge a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and National Democratic Front during its last remaining months after squandering the time and opportunities for ending Muslim and communist insurgencies during the last nine years that Mrs. Arroyo has been in power.