PIMENTEL WARNS OF POLITICAL UNREST
IF MAY 14 ELECTIONS ARE DIRTY

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino ?Nene? Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today warned that the country?s economic condition is bound to deteriorate and political unrest will heighten after the May 14 mid-term elections if the Arroyo administration resorts to massive cheating and vote-buying to get its candidates elected as it did in the 2004 polls.

Pimentel said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as the Chief Executive of the land, will be guided only by one consideration: To win the May elections at all costs.

?To that end, she will pour out government and other funds, to which she has access to ensure that her candidates, especially for the House of Representatives win big,? he told the Philippine Business Leaders Forum at the Manila Polo Club in Makati City.

Noting that the vote-buying has already begun, the opposition senator said one glaring example is the reported release of P1 billion ostensibly to fund the rehabilitation of congressional district in Camarines Sur that was devastated by typhoon Reming late last year.

He said it is too much of a coincidence that the presidential son, Dato Arroyo, is running for congressman in the district. The release of P1 billion for the reconstruction of the district is a facile way of paving his road to victory in the district?s congressional race, Pimentel added.

Pimentel said the President?s ?total support? for her congressional candidates could be explained by her desire to forestall a possible impeachment scenario when Congress opens in July.

Pimentel said the President will look the other way if illicit money ? jueteng and smuggling ? flows into the campaign coffers of her local candidates.

And as the President did in the past, Pimentel said she will raid the OWWA (Overseas Workers Welfare Administration) funds, the road users tax money, sundry agricultural development funds, and other sources of government revenues to promote her candidates.

In the meantime, Pimentel said public services will degenerate into political patronage. ?If you are with the administration, you will get some of the largesse, if not, you will just have to wait for better times.?

He also expressed fears that corruption and extrajudicial killings will go on unabated and dominate not only the current electoral season but also the years up to the end of the President?s term.

?The President will be unable to stop corruption or the killings because she and some of the key leaders of the armed forces and the police mutually benefit from the situation. Through their guns, select officers of both armed agencies assure her stay in power while in power, she in turn will take care of them. It is a classic case of I scratch your back, you scratch mine.?

After the election, Pimentel said public services will deteriorate and at some point the people will complain against the administration. He said the intensity of their complaints could bring about repression of the people through the Human Security Act (anti-terrorism law) which, incidentally, becomes effective two months after the elections.

On whether people power will rise up in response to the misgovernance of the President, Pimentel said it depends on what happens during the elections.

?If blatant cheating occurs, it is conceivable that the people will rise up in anger and pressure the President to step down.?

On whether the people will rise up in arms against the administration, Pimentel said it depends on the scale of the provocation with which the administration infuriates the people.

?If the level of cheating in the elections is blatantly massive and is accompanied by brutal repression of the people?s right to demand redress of their grievances, it is within the realm of the probable that the people would take up arms against the administration.?