NOGRALES TOLD TO STOP COURTING SENATORS
ON CHARTER CHANGE PLAN

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today told Speaker Prospero Nograles to keep his word not to take advantage of the joint session of Congress on July 27 to persuade the Senate to go along with the House of Representatives in pursuing the convening of a Constituent Assembly to amend the Constitution.

Pimentel said he could not blame his colleagues in the Senate for threatening to boycott or walk out from the joint session on the opening day of the regular session of Congress due to apprehensions that administration's allies in the House would seize the opportunity to coopt the senators into cooperating with House Resolution l109 on the holding of Con-Ass.

"It is reassuring to hear Speaker Nograles that they will not do that," he said.

The minority leader said that himself does not buy the idea that the administration-dominated will resort to this outrageous scheme since the agenda of the joint session should be limited to the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's state of the nation's address (SONA).

However, Pimentel said the Palace and its legislative cohorts are so desperate in pushing for Charter Change, that aims to keep Mrs. Arroyo in power beyond 2010, that they are expected to exhaust all means to pursue their ill-conceived plan.

With or without such plan, the minority leader said he does not intend to show up at the joint session of Congress. He said he has purposely avoided attending all previous joint sessions to hear Mrs. Arroyo's SONA except the first time she did in 200l after ascending to the presidency as successor of former President Joseph Estrada.

"I felt it was just a waste of time to listen to the SONA because she has reneged on her promises and commitments that she had enumerated in her speech," Pimentel said.

"I lost my trust in President Arroyo because she failed to make good on her promises. The SONA that she delivers year after year is nothing but a charade. Why should we take the trouble of attending this event and listen to her programs and commitments that she does not intend to keep? In other words, we should not allow ourselves to be fooled by her empty blandishments."

In her past SONAs, Mrs. Arroyo promised to significantly reduce poverty and unemployment, heal the political wounds and divisions of the nation, end Muslim insurgency and forge a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, upgrade the standards of education, solve the malnutrition, starvation and health problems, curb graft and corruption, balance the national budget, improve the human rights situation, stop and end extra-judicial killings and raise the country's global competitiveness.

Pimentel said none of these promises have been fulfilled and the nation is worse than before.