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At a hearing of the House Committee on constitutional amendments, the group’s president, Mahar Manga, told lawmakers that most Filipinos did not approve of charter change. Based on the survey conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, Mangahas said 64 percent of Filipinos were opposed to amending the Constitution to allow Arroyo to continue as chief official of the Philippine Republic after June 30, 2010.
The survey applied face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults divided into random samples of 300 each in Metro Manila, the balance of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao and had a ±3 percent margin of error. The SWS said 78 percent of the respondents were from Manila, 62 percent from other parts of Luzon.
The SWS pollsters confirmed that this collective sentiment remains unchanged since last year. Since last year, Arroyo and her allies in Congress have reactivated their political plans to effect the revision of the 1987 Constitution to allow Arroyo to remain in power beyond 2010, either as president or prime minister, once the Philippine Congress decides to change the form of government from presidential to parliamentary.
The influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines through Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz warned Arroyo and her allies that they were courting a major protest action if they insist on tinkering with the Constitution, an observation supported by political experts who are closely watching the evolving and developing turn of events on charter change.
The prelate, the most vocal of Arroyo's critics in the Catholic Church hierarchy, said the public does not buy their congressmen's claims that they would amend only the Constitution’s economic provisions once they convene Congress into a constituent assembly. He said his contacts among the civil society groups have been telling him that "many groups are preparing" to move in case the House of Representatives turns itself into a constituent assembly in order to amend the Constitution.
Palace officials led by Arroyo and her allies in the House of Representatives denied that the ruling party is still pushing to extend the term of the president and other incumbent elected officials. They assured the Filipino public that Arroyo would step down in 2010. The president’s son and Pampanga Rep. Jose Miguel Arroyo also said Arroyo would retire in 2010 and probably go back to teaching and performing her role as a doting grandmother to her grandchildren.
But these are plain political drama of the president and her allies. Last Tuesday, another bombshell was trained against Arroyo upon the discovery of House Resolution No. 550, filed by administration ally Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas, calling on both chambers of the House to postpone the 2010 elections to 2011, thereby extending the term of all incumbent officials, including the president.
The resolution was filed in April this year. It is one of the 30 resolutions filed before the House Committee on constitutional amendments since last year. Two other resolutions filed this year on charter change called on both chambers of Congress to convene as a constituent assembly, the first resolution was initiated by the president’s son and the second resolution was filed by House Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr.
The political dilemma of Arroyo to regain public trust and rally the 89 million Filipinos behind charter change and her term extension is further complicated and made impossible by the turnout of the ongoing hearings of the House justice committee on the fresh impeachment complaint against Arroyo.
Former House Speaker Jose de Venecia, who testified in the ongoing hearings, confirmed that the controversial US$329-million broadband deal with China’s ZTE was hatched at ZTE headquarters with the president, her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo and former Commission on Elections chair Benjamin Abalos on Nov. 2, 2006.
De Venecia, a former staunch ally of Arroyo, said he was present during a secret meeting together with ZTE officials and the Philippine group where the anomalous deal was hatched.
The second political explosive dropped by de Venecia was his admission that he is one of the 180 pro-Arroyo lawmakers who received a cash gift of 500,000 pesos from Arroyo last year. According to the former House speaker, Arroyo pressured him to transmit the bogus impeachment complaint filed by alleged loose cannon of Malacañang to prevent the filing of a strong and highly substantiated impeachment complaint.
Political observers agreed with de Venecia that the move was to enable Arroyo to buy legal protection at least for one year.
Less than a week after the de Venecia expose on palace bribery last year, a leading opposition newspaper disclosed that an ally of Arroyo took charge of distributing another set of cash gifts as a reward for congressmen who would kill the impeachment complaint.
The Daily Tribune writers Charlie Manalo and Gerry Baldo reported that allies of Arroyo lined up for 500,000 pesos on Tuesday this week at the posh Linden Suites Hotel in Manila. Their sources, who requested not to be identified, alleged that pro-administration congressmen received half-a-million pesos in bundles of 1,000 and 500-peso bills from the palace cash gift giver.
The scoop about the new payoffs was tipped off by a palace insider to a member of the minority bloc in the House of Representatives.
As of this writing, the House Committee on Justice dominated by Arroyo’s allies in Congress dismissed the fresh impeachment complaint as not sufficient in substance, therefore paving the way for the red carpet massacre of the fourth impeachment complaint against the president. Simultaneously with the junking of impeachment, a report confirmed that Arroyo and other palace officials held a party inside Malacañang Palace to celebrate the defeat of the impeachment complaint.
President Arroyo is now relieved for another day as far as the impeachment complaint is concerned, courtesy of billions of taxpayers’ money which she plundered to buy another year of legal protection. Her next project is charter change. And this is end of her political career, whatever clout she has in the corrupted House of Representatives.
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(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is www.gerryalbertcorpuz.motime.com, and he can be contacted at themanager98@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Gerry Albert Corpuz.)
