Recently, in response to all the brickbats being thrown at her mother and her mother’s administration, Luli Arroyo sent a missive that tries to respond to the criticisms. Here is her message:

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My family has never made money illegally, much less made money from government. My father has always steered clear of any action that might even cast doubt on my mother’s integrity.

Even when my mother was an undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, my father could have had a lucrative career being on retainer as lawyer of garment manufacturers and exporters. Though this was legal, my father opted not to take on these clients because it raised an ethical question of a conflict of interest since my mother was in charge of the Garments and Textile Export Board.

If at that time, my father opted not to make money even though it was legal because it might cast doubt on my mother’s integrity, he will not do anything now that she is the highest officer of the land. Even today, you never heard him make money or "commission" out of the donations for the athletes in preparation for the SEA Games and the Olympics, because he made sure that the money passed directly from the sponsors to the particular sports associations or athletes, and never passed through his hands.

Obviously these accusations thrown at him by politicians are politically motivated, because he was fat and was rich to begin with, and was made an easy target.

During the time of President Ramos, I remember there was also some issue about a government bidding that was questioned by the losing bidder, but we all accepted that this was just sour graping by the loser. The only difference today is that the losing bidder who is sour graping is the former speaker’s son, who thinks there is no ethical or legal problem going for government contracts which will pass through Congress.

People say that there have been a lot of accusations thrown at my father, so these must be true since "where there’s smoke, there’s fire." My response is: Sure, if the fire was caused by ARSON. In other words, the arsonists caused the destruction, then pointed to others to deflect blame from themselves.

So many times, the people who actually make money from whatever deals do so using my father’s name even though he is not at all involved, and then when they get caught, they point an accusing finger at him while pocketing the money they made.

I question the timing of this supposedly new revelation [in the national broadband deal]. It only adds more of the same based on vague statements, fiction and creative embellishments of conversations the "witness" was not actually privy to. This comes after a change in leadership in Congress. I suppose this is still part of the "valedictory" of the previous leadership.

Why do people want to destroy my mother? Because she has tried very hard to take out the institutionalized corruption, so the way they fight back is to try to destroy my family’s reputation. This concerted effort to smear her reputation began the minute she resigned from the cabinet of her predecessor, and has gone on unrelented.

Unfortunately many people don’t understand this, that the corruption has been built up for at least two decades, and pervades not only government but society in general, and it will probably take many years to wipe it out of our system, especially when those entrenched are fighting back and fighting dirty not to be unseated.

The reason the economy is doing well and foreign investors are back with billion dollar private investments, numbers we haven’t seen in more than a decade, is that my mother has concentrated on the policy and on running the government and making the difficult decisions, and these are now bearing fruit. All the next president has to do is to keep our course steady.

But many of these politicians are either impatient, or want the old system back, or think that they can earn popular points by tearing her down. She hasn’t concerned herself with how the media or the political plotters portray her. She has made the unpopular but necessary decisions for the good of the economy and the country.

Some people have also said that our economic numbers are meaningless, that the 7.1% growth is a farce because the gap between rich and poor is bigger now.

The most recent SWS survey on self-rated poverty says that the number who think they are poor has decreased from the last time they did the survey. Meaning, people feel the effects of economic upliftment.

I want to add that billion dollar private investors which are multinational companies are happy with the policies of my mother. These are a part of the reason they invest or increase their investments. None of them have complained that my family asked for "commission," unlike complaints made during the past administration. This is what many of their global CEOs said at the World Economic Forum in Davos; those who have already invested in the country enticed others to do so.

What these CEOs feared was that after my mother’s administration, the next president might change policies and might not understand the importance of her economic and fiscal reforms. She assured them that despite the rhetoric from those running for president, most of them want investments and the jobs they generate to continue.