Bashing of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo expected

For a change, President Benigno Aquino III should tone down his bashing of his predecessor, now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA), in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) today, Sen. Gregorio Honasan said on Sunday.

Without preempting the President, Honasan said he wished Mr. Aquino would stop singling out Arroyo for the woes besetting his year-old administration.

“I heard from friends that there will be some GMA-bashing. I slightly disagree with that tack, but that’s the President’s judgment call,” he also said in an interview.

The lawyer of Arroyo also expects his client to be the “punching bag” of Mr. Aquino.

Raul Lambino said Arroyo felt it was better for her to skip this year’s Sona because it would be “predictably hostile” to her.

“She (Arroyo) has been their punching bag in the 2007 and 2010 elections and now in the Sona. We believe that more than 90 percent of the speech will be against her. This is overkill,” Lambino said in a phone interview.

Aside from the former President, her sons—Ang Galing Pinoy Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo and Camarines Sur Rep. Dato Arroyo—and brother-in-law, Negros Occidental Rep. Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo, were not expected to attend today’s Sona, according to Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong.

Joker Arroyo skips Sona

Also skipping Mr. Aquino’s Sona is Sen. Joker Arroyo, who said he loathed addresses that divide the country.

“I prefer not to hear what would be a state of disunion address. A President, like a good father of a family, must strive to unite the people, and not to divide them,” Senator Arroyo said.

He said that at the height of the US Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln always had in mind the “unity, not division” of the country.

“In his second inaugural, he (Lincoln) addressed both the North and South: ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace…’” Senator Arroyo said, quoting Lincoln.

Besides, he said, Sonas were fairy tales. “It’s a breast-beating address,” said the lawmaker, who recalled attending the Sona in his first few years as a lawmaker after he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1992.

Honasan said the Aquino administration did not inherit all its socioeconomic and political woes from the Arroyo administration.

“This is a cumulative effect, for better or for worse, of every single administration before Noynoy. Maybe GMA is culpable for some things, but this is not her fault only. I would refrain from singling out GMA,” he said.

Honasan, however, said he would understand if Mr. Aquino would do this to restate the problems he inherited from the past administration.

Plunder charges

Mr. Aquino is delivering his second Sona before Congress on Monday on the heels of the filing of plunder charges against Arroyo over the misuse of charity funds, and fresh allegations she had ordered the rigging of the results of the 2004 and 2007 national elections.

Honasan, who observed that there was a “pattern” of obsession with the Arroyo administration, warned of the pitfall of “singling out” Arroyo.

“If we single out GMA that will defeat the rational objective of due process. We go back to the cumulative effect syndrome. Maybe GMA aggravated it but she did not invent corruption in this country. We should run after all Presidents before Noynoy if we want to be consistent,” he said.

All these charges against Arroyo should be left to the courts, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, for his part, said the administration should undertake a “systematic investigation” of charges of election fraud.

“I hope the government will finally take GMA and other alleged cheating masterminds to account for poll fraud in 2004 and 2007,” he said in an earlier text.

The allegations by former Maguindanao Election Supervisor Lintang Bedol and former Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan that Arroyo ordered the manipulation of election results “should lead to truth, convictions, institutional reforms and even revamp in the Comelec,” Cayetano said. With a report from Gil C. Cabacungan Jr.