MANILA, Philippines—It was a revelation that apparently awed more than it shocked.
As he promised, President Benigno Aquino III Monday bared a laundry list of anomalies that allegedly skimmed billions of pesos from government coffers in the Arroyo administration.
In his first State of the Nation Address (SONA), Mr. Aquino detailed cases of fund misuse, from the misappropriation of calamity funds for former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s district in Pampanga and the grant of perks to government executives to the large-scale importation of rice.
“This report is merely a glimpse of our situation,” the President said. “It is not the entire picture of the crises we are facing. The reality was hidden from our people, who seem to have been deliberately obfuscated on the real state of our nation”.
He described as “revolting” the manner the Arroyo administration did business.
“Money was there only to be wasted. You have heard how the public coffers were squandered,” he said in his speech in Filipino to a packed Batasang Pambansa and a nationwide radio and television audience.
Mr. Aquino said that proof of this profligacy was the over-importation of rice in 2004 and 2007 that resulted in a debt of P177 billion.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
