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Friday, June 10, 2005
Palace aide now not sure it was Arroyo
MANILA -- Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Thursday he could have been wrong about his earlier "assumption" that it was President Arroyo's voice on a tape that appears to link the administration to poll fraud.
"I believe I said the voice appears to be the voice of the President, but I could be wrong because of the state of technology we have. You can alter voices, etc. That's why we submitted immediately these discs to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for their action and I believe they have made already a preliminary analysis," Bunye said.
But before the NBI could report its findings, President Arroyo virtually confirmed it was her voice on the wiretapped conversations.
"Of course, there are some of us who violated our law without hesitation and destroyed the President's security just to bring down the government. But I won't allow these to go unpunished," she said in a radio interview Thursday.
The President also said she has ordered the justice department to investigate her son and brother-in-law, both congressmen, as well as her husband.
Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. has called for the resignation of President Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro, following accusations that the First Family received millions in illegal gambling payoffs and rigged the 2004 national elections.
Palace dinner
The fourth witness in the Senate jueteng investigation said Thursday she once delivered jueteng money to President Arroyo's son, Pampanga Representative Juan Miguel "Mikey" Arroyo, and brother-in-law, Negros Occidental Representative Ignacio "Iggy" Arroyo, amounting to P900,000.
In 2003, Iggy Arroyo had claimed he was the "Jose Pidal" whose multi-million-peso bank accounts prompted a Senate investigation on allegations of corruption and money laundering. He was a private citizen then.
But in Cebu, the President's allies remained behind her, after opposition legislators announced the filing of an impeachment complaint against Arroyo.
Governor Gwendolyn Garcia called for sobriety.
"Let us not allow ourselves to be waylaid and sidetracked by all these goings-on that only confuse the public," she said.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña warned the public of the "evil hands" behind the call for the impeachment of Arroyo, saying discussions on the issues against the President are only a waste of time.
Osmeña will be flying to Manila Friday to join other supporters of the President's Lakas party, during a dinner that she will host in Malacañang.
'Bag woman'
Sandra Cam, 45, a former Provincial Board member of Masbate, said then Region 5 police director Restituto Mosqueda had asked her once to deliver P500,000 to Mikey and P400,000 to his uncle, Iggy, at their offices at the House of Representatives.
She said it was in the second week of December 2004 when she handed the money to the Arroyos in the Batasan complex in Quezon City.
Iggy immediately denied receiving money from Cam, branding her a liar. He tagged Senator Panfilo Lacson as the one who orchestrated the witness to link him to the alleged payoff.
Cam said Mosqueda had trusted her enough to collect and deposit the jueteng payola.
But Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago doubted Cam's credibility.
Santiago said the witness failed to establish her connection with Mosqueda and why the police official trusted her to carry jueteng money.
"She could be Mosqueda's mistress and if so, she should reveal it. It goes to her credibility as a witness," Santiago said.
But in a separate interview, Cam denied having an affair with Mosqueda and said that her sole reason for coming out is to tell the truth and clarify that she is not directly involved in jueteng operations.
Investigation
From August 2004 to February 2005, Mosqueda asked her to produce at least P1 million per month and bought at least two SUVs, an Isuzu DMAX and a Toyota Revo, Cam said.
She told the Senate inquiry that she placed the P400,000 in a brown envelope and wrapped the P500,000 with a gift wrapper, then handed them to Iggy.
Cam also recounted that she met Iggy inside his office and that he asked her why the money was short by P100,000. On the other hand, she met Mikey inside the session hall.
Her family members' alleged involvement in jueteng operations and cheating in the May 2004 elections are part of her enemies' destabilization efforts, the President said.
"These accusations are serious and they should be answered so we can move on. I have ordered the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation on my son, brother-in-law, and even my husband," the President said.
"Nobody in my family or any of my relatives is above the law. No authority of justice should fear imposing the law on them. Let's investigate and whatever the result, bato-bato sa langit (never mind who gets hurt)," said Arroyo in an interview on dzRH radio.
In his regular press conference, Mayor Osmeña dismissed talks that Arroyo cheated in the elections last May. No election fraud happened in Cebu, where Arroyo got a million votes more than the late Fernando Poe Jr., he said.
"It was Cebu that made the President win. So let's ask this, did we really cheat for the President? We did not cheat for her, she just had a really lousy opponent, with all due respect to him," he added. (Sunnex Luzon with LCR/JPM of Sun.Star Cebu)
(June 10, 2005 issue)
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Ex-NBI officer accuses Arroyo of cheating