UP Law professors, students call on Arroyo to quit
By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:29:00 02/21/2008
MANILA, Philippines - Angered by what they viewed as President Macapagal-Arroyo’s inaction on the disclosures about the scrapped National Broadband Network (NBN) project, students and professors of the University of the Philippines College of Law Wednesday called on her to go on leave or resign her post.
“The President’s own silence on this matter is totally unacceptable. The exposés have directly implicated her,” UP College of Law Dean Salvador Carlota said at a briefing, reading from a prepared statement titled “A Call for Truth and Accountability.”
The College of Law charged that Ms Arroyo, as well as Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, violated public trust by their silence and inaction on the claims of corruption that attended the approval of the $329-million NBN deal.
“Public office is a public trust. This is the core principle of our republican and democratic nation,” the college said in the statement prepared by the UP Law community.
It said that with the revelations of Jose de Venecia III, Commission on Higher Education Chair Romulo Neri and Senate witness Rodolfo Lozada Jr., the “silence and inaction of the President and the Ombudsman directly violate this core principle.”
“Instead of adopting a policy of full disclosure, [Ms Arroyo] has allowed [Neri] to keep a selective silence—when summoned by the Senate but not by Malacañang,” it said.
At the very least
The UP College of Law said all the officials “implicated by key witnesses” in the deal and in the “kidnapping” of Lozada on Feb. 5 should at the very least take a leave of absence, but also consider resignation.
It added: “For the President and the Ombudsman, while we have asked, at the minimum, for them to take a leave of absence, we say also: Resignation is always an option.”
Carlota later clarified that the President or the Ombudsman should take a leave pending the completion of the Senate inquiry into the NBN deal.
“The minimum that we want her to do is to take a leave while the investigation is ongoing, to erase any doubt that the investigatory process will be tainted,” he said in reply to a question.
Theodore Te, director of the college’s Office of Legal Aid, cut in, saying: “That’s the minimum. The other option is resignation.”
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