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By Maricel V. Cruz Reporter
There seems to be no stopping
Speaker Jose de Venecia from telling President Gloria Arroyo to
shape up.
Hours after challenging the
President to end corruption in the government, de Venecia on Tuesday
night asked her to lead a “moral revolution” that will
“dramatically reduce political corruption in the country.”
The Speaker, in an interview over
cable news channel ANC, said he was polishing up a letter to the
President in which he will flesh out a “total solution” to fight
corruption in the country.
“The President of the
Philippines can take the lead in moving to eradicate corruption in
this country,” de Venecia pointed out, citing Mrs. Arroyo’s
power, through to the Ombudsman, to “cleanse” the Cabinet,
Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the Philippine National Police
(PNP), local government and even Congress.
“When I say this, I mean I am
not without sin,” de Venecia said. “I am 70, and I want to leave
a good legacy for my country, for my children and for my
grandchildren. We must now do something to lead our country from
corruption, from despair and from poverty.”
De Venecia said the
President—if she agreed to lead this moral revolution—could yet
emerge as “perhaps the greatest President in Philippine
history.”
He said the country is tired of a
“band-aid” solution and is looking for a total solution that
“cannot be done in 100 days.”
To strengthen anticorruption
measures, de Venecia said Congress must now increase the
Ombudsman’s budget by 50 percent to boost its investigative powers
and approve a proposal to provide state subsidy to political parties
to reduce political corruption.
De Venecia said without the
subsidy, “it’s the drug lords and the gambling lords, the
jueteng lords, who [will] finance the candidates [in elections].”
“So, from day one they [unsubsidized
political parties] become corrupt . . . because of poverty, votes
are [offered] for sale. So, the whole [political] process, the whole
society, is rotten,” he added.
“The only way to go is to
cleanse [the government] and admit to ourselves and to everybody
that we [also] need to change,” de Venecia said.
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