|
Monday, July 18, 2005
Another Cabinet member quits
MANILA -- Another Cabinet member has resigned irrevocably, as former presidential advisers warned of a tug-of-war between needed reforms and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s political ambitions.
Silvestre Afable became the 11th Cabinet member to quit during the six-week crisis, leaving his job as presidential communications director without publicly explaining his decision.
But Afable said he would stay on as chief government negotiator in peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
“I will continue to be chief negotiator but no longer in the Cabinet as communications director,” Afable told The Associated Press, without elaborating, Sunday.
‘Crippled’
Ten Cabinet members, including key economic advisers, resigned July 8 and asked Arroyo to step down, saying she has been crippled by the elections scandal and has lost her ability to govern.
Arroyo has refused calls for her to step down, saying she has committed no crime and did not manipulate the results of the May 2004 presidential elections.
The large turnout (estimated at 125,000) during a pro-Arroyo rally Saturday could give the President the boost she needs to survive the political crisis.
Yet the President’s poll numbers are dismal. A survey by the Social Weather Stations, reported Friday, revealed that 62 percent of those surveyed said Arroyo should resign, and 85 percent said she should be impeached if she doesn’t quit.
The telephone survey, conducted July 12-14, included 579 adult respondents in Metro Manila and had a margin of error of four percentage points.
Skewed
But presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said the survey was skewed because it only included responses from the capital, traditionally an opposition stronghold. Bunye urged pollsters to include responses from other parts of the country.
A group of Cabinet officials who resigned en masse said they tried to keep President Arroyo focused on reforms, but became disillusioned when she concentrated instead on staying in power at all costs.
The dramatic July 8 mass resignation of the 10 officials, including most of Arroyo’s economic team, added to the increasingly loud voices calling on the President to step down.
“There was no specific tipping point. It is a confluence of events, I think an accumulation of frustration,” said resigned finance secretary Cesar Purisima, the acknowledged chief of Arroyo’s economic team, who expressed concern over the economic fallout from the political crisis.
Former education secretary Florencio Abad said there had been a constant “tug-of-war” between implementing reforms and Arroyo’s own political plans since she, then vice president, took over when
Joseph Estrada was forced to step down amid massive anti-corruption protests in 2001.
“We thought that this time around the President can focus on drastic and very much demanded reforms, without being hindered by having to pay political debts. But when the President began to focus on the elections of 2004, then that’s when really the differences began to surface,” Abad told foreign correspondents Friday.
Malacañang had no comment on the allegations. Corazon Soliman, who headed the social welfare department and was considered the official closest to Arroyo, said the Cabinet “dissonance became stronger” after the 2004 elections.
The Cabinet tried hard to deal with the percolating scandals.
Purisima said it became his “night job trying to help in the crisis.”
He said the Cabinet was divided. One group stood for “survival at all costs.” The other, to which he belonged, wanted “reform to survive, to govern.”
His group was the majority at one point, but Arroyo’s preoccupation to survive politically finally overwhelmed them, he said.
Soliman there were discussions and debates “until we saw, especially for me, that debating and influencing at this stage is not any more workable” and the President’s credibility and leadership became irreparably damaged.
In a statement Friday, the resigned officials repeated their call on the President to resign.
“You promised to put more food on the table, jobs for the jobless, and better education for our children,” the statement said.
“But how can this be achieved when you have for yourself created that mantle of doubt and mistrust not just among us who had been your closest allies in nation building, but in every Filipino?” (AP)
(July 18, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
|
|
[return to top]
[home]
|
|
Vice mayor, 5 others killed in ambush