PIMENTEL SAYS GMA INCAPABLE OF MOUNTING
CREDIBLE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CORRUPTION

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said the war against corruption will continue to falter for as long as the country is led by a president whose legitimacy is under question and whose hold on power is shaky.

Pimentel said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could not govern wisely and effectively because her administration is hounded by allegations that she cheated her way to victory in the 2004 presidential election.

"Because she is an interloper in Malacañang , she does not have the support of the people," Pimentel said.

"When the president of a democratic country, like ours grabs power by cheating in the elections as she did, her hold on power can only be tenuous."

Because of the ineffectual anti-graft campaign under the present administration, Pimentel lamented that the Philippines has earned the dubious distinction as the most corrupt in this part of Asia, based on survey findings of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) last March.

As if this was not enough, the United States Trade Representative Office recently submitted a National Trade Estimate report to the US Congress describing government corruption in the Philippines as pervasive.

In September, last year, the World Bank report, Government Matters 2006 stated that the country has faltered over the past eight years, in governance and in curbing corruption.

"The stench of corruption is literally oozing through the interstices of the bureaucracy," Pimentel said. "And the stinking trail leads to the doorsteps of Malacañang ."

He said a quote from the late US President Harry Truman is an apt description of who, in the end, is responsible: The buck stops here.

"Ultimately, the President is to blame. It is difficult to exculpate the President from all the colossal corruption going on in her administration. If the President is not involved in the massive corruption, it is curious, to say the least, why she is completely unable or shall we say, unwilling to stop it."

Describing the future of governance in the country as sad, Pimentel said the present administration is over-burdened by three Cs - confusion, corruption and constitutional contortions.

He said a major reason why the President is incapable of waging a credible fight against corruption is that she herself was caught with her fingers in the electoral cookie jar in the 2004 presidential election.

But he said the President, instead of resigning, engages in constitutional contortions to stay in power.

Pimentel said Mrs. Arroyo used Commission on Elections officials led by former Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano to manufacture election data in some parts of the Visayas and Mindanao that made up for her enormous electoral setbacks elsewhere in the country.

Because of unrelenting questions that dog the legitimacy of the Arroyo presidency, Pimentel said the President now relies on the armed components of government power to stabilize her administration.

"She can no longer bank on the time-honored principle of the Rule of Law. Thus, she now uses the time-tested totalitarian principle that power flows out of the barrel of the gun."