Thursday, February 28, 2008 Mindanao town mayors express support for Arroyo By Jeffrey M. Tupas
AMID growing calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's ouster, town mayors from Mindanao have expressed their loyalty to her administration by signing a manifesto of support for the President's "integrity and honest governance" during Wednesday's Mindanao cluster conference of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP).
In response, Arroyo gave the local executives a relatively fat 17 percent increase in their internal revenue allotment (IRA) to the tune of P210 million yearly.
Mayor Ramon Abalos of Lambayong, Sultan Kudarat Province, who is also LMP president for Mindanao, said their support for the President is anchored on her administration's role in the sustainable development of the region. He added: "If we do not support her, we will all go back to zero."
While the Mindanao mayors manifested a strong stand in favor of Arroyo, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was nowhere to be found during Wednesday's event.
Suspiciously, Duterte again filed a leave of absence a day before Arroyo arrived. Some local executives and politicians said Duterte appeared to have distanced himself from the President.
When Arroyo attended a peace forum in Tagum early this month, Duterte was also unavailable. It was a scene, which was highly anticipated by the public especially after Davao Representative Prospero Nograles became the speaker of the House of Congress. Nograles and Duterte are both close allies of the President, but are also known to be archrivals.
The manifesto, signed by 26 provincial chairs of the LMP, reads: "We firmly believe in her integrity and honest governance of our country. As a sign of our unwavering support and allegiance to her presidency, we are affixing our signatures."
In the same event, Arroyo signed into law the extension of the Republic Act 8178 or the Agriculture Tarrification Act until 2015.
With the extension, she said, the government is expecting P6 billion yearly from agricultural export and promised that 30 percent of the annual revenue will go to Mindanao to be used for the development of the agricultural sector, especially on the rehabilitation of farm-to-market roads, post harvest facilities, and irrigation, among others.
She also announced the increase in the IRA for the local government units (LGUs) to P210 million or about 17 percent increase annually, starting this year.
Arroyo, before joining the mayors in the Grand Regal Hotel, graced the cornerstone laying at the four-room two-storey school building that is worth P4.2 million in Sirawan Toril. She also met with the women beneficiaries of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) projects, and later went to the construction site of the Bankerohan Bridge.
All through her visit, Arroyo was accompanied by former senator Edgardo Angara and Palawan Representative Abraham Mitra. Other senior officials, who also arrived for the mayors' conference, were Senators Loren Legarda, Mar Roxas, Bayani Fernando, and Richard Gordon. Also expected to arrive is Senate President Manuel Villar.
Mayor Abalos said the members of the LMP-Mindanao are mindful of the controversies that are currently rocking the administration. They even expressed confidence that the President will be able to weather the crisis, Abalos said.
The ZTE scandal, now being heard by the senate, is not even "enough to cause the downfall of the President," Abalos added.
"These calls for Arroyo's resignation are not reflective of the pulse of the whole country. In fact, we are expecting a political turmoil if the President will be forced to remove from her office," Abalos said.
Abalos, who said he is a relative of former Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr. who is now also embroiled in the controversial ZTE deal, talked about how the President supposedly facilitated the appreciation of the peso, the additional IRA for LGUs annually, and the various projects given to them, as the barometers of how good Arroyo as a president is.
For the town of Lambayong only, Abalos said Arroyo has been implementing the P100-million road rehabilitation under the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP) of the Department of Agriculture (DA), and the P60 million worth of project given to the agrarian reform areas.
Several projects have also been pipelined for the town of Magpet, the reason why its Mayor, Efren Piñol, gives his full support to Arroyo's administration.
There is also a P15 million worth of water project to be implemented by the National Poverty Commission aside from the ongoing P8.9 million MRDP projects and several others, Piñol said.
"She delivered as a president," said Piñol who stressed that his support to Arroyo doesn't necessarily reflect the stand of the other 17 mayors of North Cotabato.
With these, the younger brother of North Cotabato Vice Governor Emmanuel Piñol said that the calls for the President to resign are unwise.
"I don't think ZTE is enough reason for her to step down and it would be very illogical for us to change horse in the middle of the race. Let us instead allow our justice system to roll," he said.
Asked about the timing of the LMP gathering and the invitation of Arroyo as the conference guest, Abalos said, "everything was just coincidental." He said planning for the event happened in November last year.
Mindanao has 27 provinces, 422 municipalities and 33 cities. Event organizers, during the press briefing for Arroyo's arrival, told reporters that they missed to invite the mayor of Zamboanga Sibugay as the town mayor's name was not included in their list.
Senator Legarda meantime said she is not joining the calls for the resignation of the President.
"It's not yet time with the ongoing investigation in the Senate. Not to think of her resignation as the President would be better for all of us... we must first find a person who is not corrupt and corrupted before we might even think of asking her to resign," Legarda told reporters.
