The road to Cha-Cha leads to Gloria

Release: 2006-12-17

Joining hundreds of thousands of anti-charter change protestors in Luneta Park today, AKBAYAN reminded the public that unresolved allegations on the legitimacy of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo are at the core of the derailed charter change. The group warned that insidious attempts to tinker with the constitution shall be made again and again by the administration in order to survive the ‘Hello Garci’ controversy.

AKBAYAN Rep. Etta Rosales said that GMA was the main target beneficiary of the thwarted moves to amend the Constitution through the people’s initiative and the Constituent Assembly. “It was mainly for her political survival, and Cha-cha was designed so that the unholy interests of Malacañang, local politicians and members of the House of Representatives are achieved in one political project,” said Rosales.

Despite the scrapping of the proposed Constituent Assembly, AKBAYAN Rep. Mayong Aguja warned the public to be consistently vigilant. He said Cha-Cha is not yet dead, and it will not be buried six feet under by the administration as long as the political survival of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is in doubt. “As far as Malacañang is concerned, charter change is still an option,” AKBAYAN Rep. Aguja said. “It ditched the idea temporarily to appease the public, but it is still an odious trump card that they are willing to use. But the infrastructure to revive it is very much present, as evidenced by the House majority’s decision to archive Resolution 197, which merely freezes the Con Ass. Section 105 of the House Rules is still enforced, which means that the same questionable process can be deployed by the House majority to force the approval of Con Ass or a Con Con.”

For her part, AKBAYAN Rep. Risa Hontiveros urged the public to channel their moral outrage against the convening of a Constituent Assembly to revive righteous indignation over Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s illegitimacy. “What should be realized is that this administration is using a range of alarming strategies, from extrajudicial killings to undeniably illegal moves to amend the constitution, to evade the ‘Hello Garci’ controversy. Democratic constitutional reforms can only happen when this administration is no longer in power. Thus, inside or outside Congress, or even during the 2007 elections, the voice of the people should resonate with the loudest repudiation of traditional politics and corruption,” said Rep. Hontiveros.