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Saturday, June 18, 2005
Agent links Erap girl to wiretapping scandal
MANILA -- Read her lips: No comment. "I will not comment on the authenticity of the material that the accusers admit were illegally derived," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Friday.
She said those calling on her to admit or deny whether it is her voice in the controversial wiretapped conversation are trying to entrap her into helping their destabilization efforts.
President Arroyo also said her critics are hoping that their "flicks" will make her and her supporters lose their nerve so that she will not be able to run the country effectively.
"If they will not succeed in ousting me from office now, what they will do next is flick me repeatedly and force me to cooperate with them in their (destabilization) efforts," she said in a speech in Agusan del Sur.
Mistress
A congressional inquiry on the wiretapping is set to start next week. One of those who will be invited is the military intelligence agent who bugged the phone conversation, allegedly of the President with Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.
Technical Sgt. Vidal Doble of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has implicated the mistress of former president Joseph Estrada in the scandal.
In an affidavit, Doble said that former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) deputy director Samuel Ong paid him P2 million to admit he was the source of the audiotape and that the money came from former movie actress Laarni Enriquez, Estrada's former mistress.
Doble said the payoff was made in a room at the 5th floor of Imperial Hotel along Timog Ave. in Quezon City, where he and Ong did the audio-video recording.
Doble, who is in the custody of the police, said he was forced to agree to Ong's proposal to authenticate the tape, for fear that the former NBI official's camp might harm his family.
Text rumors
PNP Director General Arturo Lomibao read Doble's affidavit to the media.
But Enriquez, in a radio interview, said the real target of police in hunting people responsible for releasing the wiretapped tapes was Estrada.
She also said she did not know Ong, the whistleblower on the wiretapped conversations.
The storm created by the wiretapping issue has provoked rumors, spread by mobile phone, that martial law will be declared, but Malacañang denied such a plan existed.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said the decision of the President to go abroad early next week shows that she's clueless on how to confront the issue. Arroyo is due to leave for Hong Kong.
"The longer she is unable to give a credible explanation regarding her voice in the tape talking with Garcillano, the more difficult it is for her to govern the nation," Pimentel said.
'Resign'
He said the President's Hong Kong trip would be useless because some foreign investors are losing their confidence in the government due to the tape and jueteng payola scandals.
"Maybe she can have time to write her resignation letter and wind up her affairs. We wish her well," Pimentel said.
Pimentel's colleague, Sen. Sergio "Serge" Osmeña III, also wants the President to step down.
"Well, they're not friends obviously. He is of course entitled to his own opinion but no, we're not fighting. We don't even discuss it and I continue to get support from him with what we're trying to do here," said Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
Last Tuesday, the mayor borrowed his brother's private plane to transport suspected robber Rey Torres from Pagadian City to Cebu. Tomas said he offered to pay for fuel but the senator declined. (Sunnex/PNA/LCR of Sun.Star Cebu) |
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