President Aquino a far cry from his mother Cory, says Senator Arroyo

Why can’t you be like your mama?

Senator Joker Arroyo

The man who ran and handily won the 2010 presidential election on the strength of his political pedigree should take a leaf from his mother’s style of governance and respect for the rule of law, said Sen. Joker Arroyo on Saturday.

Arroyo said President Aquino should use as a “model” his late mother, former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino, amid his raging war with the judiciary, which precipitated the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

“The model is the mother. She was a picture of restraint. She never abused her power despite the powers she possessed,” said the 84-year-old senator, a long-time human-rights lawyer and the executive secretary of the elder Aquino, in an interview with the Inquirer.

Arroyo has openly criticized the son’s policies, particularly his supposed effort to control the two other coequal branches of government. The senator denounced the impeachment of Corona upon the initiative of Mr. Aquino’s Liberal Party.

“Oh, what crimes are being committed in the name of transparency and the fight against corruption,” he said.

Arroyo recalled that Cory Aquino held immense power soon after she assumed office following the People Power Revolution of 1986. He noted that she possessed practically the same powers as her predecessor, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

But to guard against possible abuses during her watch, Cory issued Proclamation No. 3 “declaring a national policy to implement the reforms mandated by the people, protecting their basic rights, adopting a provisional constitution, and providing for an orderly transition to a government under a new constitution,” the senator said.

Proclamation No. 3—or the “Freedom Constitution”—allowed Cory Aquino to “continue to exercise legislative power” in the meantime.

“The power of Marcos was with her. She could do anything. But despite that power, she was very careful. She exercised restraint, knowing it was not yet a power vested on her by the people,” Arroyo said.

“So you see there were no abuses, there were no shortcuts. She was also for reform, but she was doing it right.”

In contrast, the incumbent President Aquino is “intolerant of any kind of dissent, any kind of disagreement with what the government does,” the senator said.

Arroyo compared the younger Aquino to a driver running over whatever obstacle was in sight. “But the problem in our case is the obstacles are people and you cannot just run over them or push them aside,” he said.

Arroyo added: “He doesn’t understand what government is. He thinks that good intentions justify doing anything. He doesn’t understand the workings of the Constitution.”

The senator warned against the possibility of Mr. Aquino succeeding in taking control of the Supreme Court.