InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA - Senator Joker Arroyo said Tuesday that President Benigno Aquino III has achieved something that former dictator President Ferdinand Marcos is notorious for, but this time without having to declare martial law: the control of all three branches of the government "in the guise of transparency."
The senator, who served as a key adviser of Aquino’s mother Cory when she was president, said that the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona by the president’s allies in Congress had the “net effect” of President Aquino becoming an autocrat “without having to declare martial law, the way President Marcos did.”
For this, he said, President Aquino is “a genius, more than Marcos.”
Showing a diagram to reporters in the Senate, Arroyo explained that there are three branches of the government - the Executive, Legislative (Lower and Upper Houses), and the Judiciary - where Aquino would hold virtual sway if Corona is successfully ousted.
“By focusing on the alleged crimes of (former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), then later on, the Chief Justice, (the President has) the people... entertained by that kind of show. What is not known is that the bid for power disguised under the claim of transparency - that is the problem we face now and I don’t know what lies ahead. But, with the impeachment and all that, the government has now won,” Senator Arroyo, who is not related to former president Arroyo, said.
The senator, who suffered under the Marcos dictatorship, recalled how in 1972 the former dictator declared Proclamation No. 1081 putting the entire country under martial rule on the claim that such would eradicate the roots of poverty and defeat creeping Communism.
“The way I look at it is (Aquino) is a genius more than Marcos. Imagine what he has achieved: Marcos issued Proclamation 1081 and with the aid of the AFP, there was military rule, but here, there’s no proclamation because it did not do anything except to muscle in everyone,” referring to the signing of the impeachment in Congress on Monday.
“This time, it took a stroke of a hand for Aquino to control the entire government,” he added.
He also believed that the impeachment case against the chief justice is a warning to all constitutionally appointed officials by the past administration -- that if you vote against the administration, you will be ousted.
“The threat of impeachment would compel members of the judiciary to resign,” Arroyo said. “When that happens, then before long we will have already an Aquino court rather than an Arroyo court.”
He said Aquino blatantly violated the 1987 Constitution, thus a “creeping authoritarian rule is now in our midst.”
“We have no more Constitution. The Constitutions is not being followed,” Arroyo said.
