Summary: Assets (Real Properties) 1991-2008, Assets (Personal Properties), Liabilities 1991-2008, Net Worth, 1991-2008
Can President Arroyo explain her wealth?
by Malou Mangahas
By all indications, President Arroyo has worked very hard. In fact, she has worked so hard that during her first years as president, official records show her declared wealth as growing faster, and by amounts much bigger, than the combined growth in the declared wealth of three presidents before her.
The late President Corazon C. Aquino’s declared net worth grew by only 4.8 percent from 1989 to 1992. By comparison, Fidel V. Ramos’s rose by 34.2 percent from 1992 to 1998, and Joseph ‘Erap’ Ejercito Estrada’s, by 7.2 percent from 1998 to1999.
Sidebar
by Malou Mangahas
MULTIMILLION pesos of net growth in stocks, real assets, cash on hand/in bank, and other personal properties could not be accounted for in the statements of assets and liabilities and net worth (SALNs) that President Arroyo filed from 1992 to 2008.
With expert help from tax analysts and fund managers, the PCIJ mapped Arroyo’s financial history in the last 17 years she served as senator, then vice president, and finally, president.
2009 State of the Nation Address
by Dr. Benjamin E. Diokno
TODAY President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will deliver her valedictory State of the Nation Address (SONA). The act is the highest level of public accountability for the president that is mandated in the Philippine Constitution – for the country’s chief executive to report to Congress, the bureaucracy, and the Filipino people on the state of the nation.
The question is which Arroyo will show up to deliver the SONA: A boastful, triumphant Arroyo, who will take credit for the Philippine economy’s uninterrupted expansion during her watch or an apologetic Arroyo, who has caused so much pain and misery for a lot of Filipinos and has managed to damage, in varying degrees, existing democratic institutions?
by Roel Landingin
RAPID economic growth in recent years, perhaps one of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s few and widely acknowledged achievements amid the steady slide in her popularity ratings, could turn out to be as debatable as her devotion to good governance and anti-corruption.
As Arroyo delivers her ninth and presumably last state of the nation address on Monday, she is again expected to highlight her past economic achievements – even as the economy is poised to either shrink for the first time since 1998 or grow at its slowest in at least seven years. Already, gross domestic product, a measure of economic output, dropped by 2.3 percent in the first quarter from the previous period.
by Tita C. Valderama
HER HANDLERS portray her as a hardworking president, but after eight years in power, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is looking more like being long on show and short on substance.
Indeed, while critics and observers alike acknowledge specific successes by her administration, they point out that more fundamental concerns were neglected in the pursuit of achieving these.
by Tita C. Valderama
BEFORE SHE — bids good-bye as president — an event that is supposed to happen next year — Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had planned to spend P2.03 trillion ($42.7 billion) on infrastructure projects between 2007 and 2010. By all accounts, she is hoping that these projects would earn her the legacy she so covets, as well as the gratitude of a people she would have served for nine years.
Yet before she could spend a single centavo, Arroyo has had to muster the numbers in Congress, which wields the illusory “power of the purse,” and have her budget approved.
Gloria's multibillion 'edifice complex'
by Malou Mangahas and Karol Ilagan
IF IT seems as if President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is omnipresent, even when on frequent travels overseas, that could partly be because of the proliferation of huge tarpaulins bearing her image.
Indeed, in the last few years, practically every town across the country has at any one time a tarpaulin with a photo of a smiling Arroyo, sometimes wearing a hard hat, and often posing beside a congressman, governor, mayor, barangay captain and other allies.
Gloria, Gloria, Reyna ng Kalsada?
by Malou Mangahas, Tita C. Valderama, and Karol Ilagan
SHE HAS been president for the last seven years, but Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could also be called “queen” — queen of roads, that is.
Arroyo seemed so obsessed with roads that her first budget secretary, Emilia T. Boncodin, recalls: “You could point to a road anywhere on the map of the Philippines, and she could tell you its name. She had memorized it all.”
by Tita C. Valderama
WORRY HAS taken over advocates of budget reform in Congress and civil society groups as the recently ratified budget bill for 2009 comes closer to becoming law. As they see it, crafty tricks have marred the preparation of the bill, which could so readily transform into a political tool for the Arroyo administration to influence the May 2010 elections in its favor.
Any time now, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will be signing into law the enrolled bill that provides for P1.4-trillion national budget for 2009, including a P50-billion “economic-stimulus fund” that critics have tagged derisively as an “election-stimulus fund” for her political allies.
