The focus of President Aquino’s crusade against corruption even before he won the Presidency, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has largely remained silent despite her constant vilification and political assassination at the hands of the Aquino administration. There is no doubt, that she is the Evil against which Aquino raises himself up as The Good. Chief Justice Corona is but the opening salvo of his Grand Siege against the Armies of Darkness.
But the world is more complex than mere Good and Evil, black and white. It would be wise to take these labels with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, democracy is as much about coming to agreement than it is about being able to discern. Thus, in the heat of the Administration’s Crusade against the Former President, all I could think of was, “What would GMA say?” Some measure of fairness is due in all this process.
Today, I got some answers. A 9-page paper authored by Arroyo was read at a colloquium in the Manila Hotel by economist Gonzalo Jurado. You can read the news article here.
I found it a reasonable and even level-headed defense from someone who had every right to lambaste and assault the Aquino administration with all the invective and expletives it can muster. But no. Arroyo’s is a simple defense of her track record, and an honest appraisal from a Former President under intense fire from her successor. No doubt she’s after vindication. Though I feel that it’s a matter of basic fairness.
You be the judge of her own words.
There are a lot of bits here which I’m sure the media will be quoting for days to come. However I’d like to highlight some parts which I think the media will pay scant attention to.
Noynoy Aquino, in the eyes of GMA, dropped the ball in infrastructure, education, and climate change in a major way.
On infrastructure:
Infrastructure strengthens our competitiveness and enables us to attract new levels of job-creating foreign direct investment. Infrastructure investment not only drives economic growth, but also creates a more efficient, competitive economy, by improving productivity and lowering the costs of doing business.
I am alarmed that the pace of infrastructure build-out has slowed dramatically under this Administration, with some projects even being cancelled outright for no good reason—such as the earlier-noted flood control projects in Central Luzon—and our country being sued by investors. At a time when we should be wooing their money, we are inviting litigation from them instead. This kind of flip-flopping may help explain the tepid investor response to the Administration’s flagship public-private partnership (PPP) program, where only one project has been awarded after all of eighteen months.
On education:
For the long term, key recommendations were also submitted by the educational task force I created in 2007–comprising representatives from the major educational and private sector bodies under the leadership of former Ateneo president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres–in order to fashion a new educational roadmap with special attention to the needs of the youth and our growing knowledge-driven industries.
The task force report is the only document I personally handed to President Aquino, when we were together in the car being driven to his inauguration last year. Unfortunately that report seems to have landed in his circular file, making our schoolchildren yet another casualty of the ongoing vilification being waged against me.
On climate change:
I also signed a large number of laws to codify environmental protection—including new legislation to promote Ecological Solid Waste Management, Wildlife Resource Conservation and Protection, Clean Water, and Biofuels. And I tried to set the example for our countrymen by dedicating every Friday to environmental concerns.
I created the Presidential Task Force on Climate Change in 2007, which was later enhanced into the Climate Change Commission under the Climate Change Act of 2009. Under the law, the Chief Executive chairs this Commission, just one of only a few bodies headed by the highest official of the land. And yet President Aquino to date has not convened the Commission even once. The country can ill afford his lack of interest in this matter, now that climate change is causing calamities at the most unexpected times and places, such as the December typhoon floods in Cagayan de Oro and my home town of Iligan City.
There is no doubt that the Administration will do all it can to belittle and set aside the report. But I hope our politics can set aside enough room for a Former President to make her case and argue her place in history. Tragically, she may be the best President that we’ll never want to talk about again. But that is not so much our doing but hers too. Karma does exist in this world, but maybe there can be redemption too.
That said, it’s not too late for Aquino either.
