Of Luli’s ‘righteous rage’

A BARRAGE of denials has come from the camp of the Arroyos in reaction to Jose de Venecia III’s Senate testimony last Tuesday that implicated First Gentleman Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo to the controversial National Broadband Network project. Even the usually composed member of the First Family, Luli Arroyo, had to spew her own venom in defense of her father, taking potshots at the past drug addiction problems and “thin(ning) hairline” of the son of House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.

Unfortunately for Luli, she probably has yet to realize that she belongs to a family that is seemingly scandal-prone. Ever since her mother, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, assumed the presidency in 2001, the Arroyos have had to weather allegation after allegation ranging from overpriced highways to secret bank accounts, to getting money from illegal gambling and acquiring thoroughbred horses, to electoral fraud operations and use of government funds to ensure the president’s reelection in 2004, and now the NBN contract awarded to the Chinese company Zhong Xing Telecommunications Equipment Limited (ZTE).

This is also assuredly not the first time that her father, the First Gentleman, has been dragged into a controversy. In a list of scandals involving the names of members of the Arroyo clan (which included Luli’s older brother Mikey and uncle Ignacio ‘Iggy’ Arroyo) that the PCIJ made in 2005, Mike Arroyo’s share of controversies consisted of, among others:

• allegedly staying in a $20,000-a-night suite at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada during the boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Mexico’s Erick Morales that year

• alleged money laundering of campaign funds and contributions in a secret bank account under the fictitious name “Jose Pidal,” which was later owned up by brother Iggy

• alleged diversion of P728 million from the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program to his wife’s 2004 election campaign war chest in the form of development assistance funds to local government units (but eventually cleared by then agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn ‘Joc-Joc’ Bolante)

Still on the 2004 polls, two political operators who admitted to rigging the count in Lanao del Sur and other provinces in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao had also pointed to Mr. Arroyo as the one who purportedly funded their operations.

At the height of the “Hello, Garci” scandal in July 2005, Mr. Arroyo even had to go on self-exile to defuse the growing clamor for the President’s resignation.

It is also worth noting that government appointees associated with the First Gentleman have also prominently figured in a number of anomalies that have hounded the Arroyo administration — Bolante for one, who was his classmate at the Ateneo de Manila University and a fellow Makati Rotarian. Before they parted ways, the First Family’s lawyers at the Villaraza law firm had also been accused by Senator Edgardo Angara of extorting from Fraport, the German firm that had a 30-percent stake in the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco) that bagged the contract to build Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

In response to the allegations against him in the media, the First Gentleman resorted to filing libel suits — an unprecedented 50 plus cases against 46 journalists. Only after he underwent a critical heart operation last April did he order these cases withdrawn.