HERE’S a Filipino-American
anti-corruption movement in the United States that is actively lobbying for
Gloria Arroyo to step down from what it branded her "counterfeit" presidency.
Called the Philippine Anti-corruption Movement U.S.A, Inc. or
PAMUSA, it recently presented a petition to that effect to President George W.
Bush, furnishing copies to key Washington executive officials and members of the
US Congress. And it also sent copies to Philippine government executive
officials and members of the Senate, including Vice President Noli de Castro,
Senate President Manny Villar, Speaker Jose de Venecia, and Chief Justice
Reynato Puno and his associates in the Supreme Court.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Gloria Arroyo’s
administration plans to sign a multi-million-dollar contract with an American
public relations firm to "influence" the White House and the US Congress on a
wide range of political, economic and security issues, and surely to "counter"
PAMUSA’s moves.
In its well-documented petition, the PAMUSA reminded Bush and
company of the US government’s "special obligation" to preserve a working
democracy in the Philippines, in the same way it has been doing in other
countries where democracies are similarly imperiled.
The actions and policies of Gloria Arroyo and her other
officials, PAMUSA noted, have undermined the Philippines’ democratic processes
and institutions. This has been manifested most recently "in the corrupt,
undemocratic and unconstitutional dismissal" by the House of Representatives of
the impeachment complaint against her last year (2007).
"The dismissal," it bluntly pointed out, "became a certainty
after the majority members had unabashedly accepted P500,000 ($11,900) each …" A
few days later she brought 30 Congress members and their families on her trips
to Spain, France and the United Kingdom "without any discernable benefit for the
country and the masses of its people hardly able to eat three square meals a
day."
These actions of Arroyo, it concluded, are "condemnable and
explicit bribery to prevent her being tried in the Senate like when two previous
impeachment complaints in 2005 and 2006 were dismissed."
She has "tolerated grand scale corruption to sustain her
dubious presidency." She showed "no scruples in spending millions of dollars for
her overseas trips. "Doubts persist about the legitimacy of her presidency. It
cited the remarks of a retired Supreme Court justice who wrote that "next only
to the evils of Marcos there has not been an episode in Philippine history that
has been foisted upon the nation that approximates a calamity envenomed by
unprecedented and insolent corruption" as the Arroyo administration.
Arroyo has been "using corruption to keep political allies in
line while she does not care about human rights and political repression,
including detention and disappearance of oppositionists. And that there is no
better proof of human rights abuses under Arroyo than the 800 extra-judicial
killings of students and farmer activists protesting the illegitimate and
corrupt presidency since 2001.
More, PAMUSA informed President Bush and Washington’s
officialdom that "poverty in the Philippines is obviously exacerbated by
unbridled corruption that it turn leads to worsening peace and order with rising
criminality such as gun-for-hire, kidnapping, terrorism … and of course
intractable problems of high infant mortality, malnutrition and unhealthy
children, and poor education until the country is caught on a downward spin
toward becomes another Darfur."
Gloria Arroyo has become the most unpopular president of the
Philippines, in the words of one of PAMUSA’s president Frank Wenceslao. He urged
President Bush "not to wait any longer for the situation (in the Philippines) to
deteriorate until disaster becomes the only alternative." And he said that
PAMUSA’s organizers, supporters and volunteers that heeded the call of President
Bush for NGOs and business community to fight corruption wherever it occurs
would be for naught while Arroyo is allowed to continue in power through
"unbridled corruption and undemocratic means."
And finally, PAMUSA appealed to President Bush to issue an executive order
against Gloria Arroyo and corrupt members of her administration for political
corruption, similar to the ones issued by previous US Presidents against corrupt
regimes like those of former Panama President Manuel Noriega and other South
American dictators, to make Gloria Arroyo to step down from her "counterfeit"
presidency.