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Friday, June 10, 2005
Arroyo, de Castro must resign
MANILA -- Senator Aquilino Pimentel has called for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Thursday for losing her credibility amidst charges of electoral fraud and some members of the First Family linked to illegal numbers game.
Pimentel said Vice President Noli de Castro should also vacate his position to give way for the holding of new presidential and vice presidential elections.
President Arroyo has "no credibility left in her whole body from head to toe, that she has exhausted whatever moral ascendancy she has since she replaced former president Joseph Estrada and her Edsa 2 allies have left her or are leaving her," Pimentel said in a statement released Thursday.
"With a credibility rating several notches below zero, with corruption snapping at her heels and with a clearly questionable electoral mandate, the President no longer has any right to claim that she has the integrity or the moral ascendancy to continue sitting as the President," he said.
The senator said while there is no direct evidence as yet linking her to jueteng, "the web of evidence is fast closing in on her. For the sake of the nation, the President should now consider resigning."
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Pimentel and former senator Ernesto Maceda are "dreaming" when they called on the President to resign and to call for a snap election.
Sober Filipinos
Bunye said even Pimentel's claim that Arroyo's allies in Edsa 2 are leaving her is "expected from more sober Filipinos."
"We believe that majority of the Filipinos are tired of the bickering and that it's time for us to move forward," he added.
President Arroyo said she did not cheat in the May 2004 elections and that a lead like hers is very hard to manufacture the opposition."
She said the National Day of Mourning that will be held Saturday will not be supported by more sober Filipinos.
She also said she does not believe reports that Cebu Archbishop Cardinal Ricardo Vidal supports calls for her impeachment because Vidal was one of those who claimed that there was no cheating in Cebu, where she got most of her lead.
The President said it has been a year since the elections and that it is now time for work.
She reminded Cebuanos that their province has developed a great deal under her administration because all pending road works have been finished.
Several witnesses, testifying before the Senate jueteng investigation, said presidential son and Pampanga Representative Juan Miguel "Mikey" Arroyo and Negros Occidental Representative Ignacio "Iggy" Arroyo were among those included in the long list of jueteng money recipients.
He also added that the President's allies are now abandoning her because of the corruption issue and the approval of the Value Added Tax (VAT).
Pimentel said the solutions to the present brouhaha are another People Power revolution, bloody upheaval, impeachment and new elections for President and Vice President.
He said he is in favor of the election as the most feasible thing to be done under the circumstances.
Must prove
Meanwhile, Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez said President Arroyo is in the brink of suffering the same fate as Estrada suffered if she would not put her act together and be humble enough to accept her faults.
He however said until all the allegations are proven, it is premature for the President to step down even as a certain Sandra Cam, the self-confessed jueteng bagwoman in the Bicol region, implicated her husband, First Gentleman Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo, and son Mikey Arroyo to jueteng payoffs. (JPM/JMR/Marie Neri of Sunnex Luzon)
(June 10, 2005 issue)
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Part of tape refers to Cebu polls, stirs row