| The people’s demands
Prosecute Arroyo
To promote justice, truth and accountability, the groups
said it would help if arroyo was prosecuted. Sr. Mary John
Mananzan, co-chair of Pagbabago! (Change), said that
the nine years of arroyo’s presidency had been marked
by massive corruption and plunder, and rampant human
rights violations leading to social injustice.
She said arroyo has been involved in at least 10 huge
graft-and-corruption cases amounting to hundreds of
billions of pesos. “She used the people’s money for selfindulgence,
she bought off legislators to kill the impeachment
complaints against her, and cheated in the elections.
To cover up her crimes, she declared a state of emergency
and barred government officials from testifying in Congress.
She invoked the so-called executive privilege and
used the military, the police and the paramilitary against
unarmed civilians, resulting in widespread human rights
violations.”
For these reasons, the progressive groups said aquino
must ensure that arroyo would be prosecuted for:
* Corruption scandals during the arroyo administration
involving herself, her family, and her political allies.
“She should be held accountable for her role in the nBn-
ZTE deal, the fertilizer fund scam etc.”
* Electoral fraud in the 2004 elections. “Hold her accountable
under the principle of command responsibility
for corruption cases involving top-ranking military and
police officials.”
* Conduct an independent audit of the May 10 elections,
take the COMELEC officials to task, as well as
Smartmatic and other members of the arroyo government
for violations of the automated electoral system
law.
* Gross human rights violations during the arroyo
administration.
According to Terry Ridon, national president of the
league of Filipino Student, they will give these concrete
people’s demand to the aquino administration. On July
26, he said the people would mobilize to show that they
are serious about their agenda and that the people are
longing for meaningful change. He warned that the people
would launch mass actions if aquino ignored these
demands. Bulatlat.com
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