Luli Arroyo’s letter

Following is Luli Arroyo’s letter in the Kaibigan ni GMA yahoo.group

Original Message —–
From: “luli_arroyo” [luli_arroyo@yahoo.com]
Sent: 02/14/2008 05:16 AM GMT
To: kgma@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [kgma] on trying to bring down my mother

Dear friends,

Here’s my full statement. Unfortunately ABS-CBN has been very unfair

in its coverage, not that I’m surprised. But it’s gotten so bad that
the other day, for instance, Sec. Lito Atienza gave an hour-long
interview to one of their reporters, only to hear Korina Sanchez state

on air that night that the cabinet members “refused” to be
interviewed. He called to complain to Maria Ressa, and all she offered was “so sorry.” Either she runs a shabby ship where people don’t know what’s going on, or they are deliberately twisting the facts. They haven’t done anything to redress this particular issue, nor run his interview.

I sent this to GMA 7 when they asked for my comments, and I hope they
are more fair with their treatment:

My family has never made money illegally, much less made money from
government. My father has always steered clear of any action that
might even cast doubt on my mother’s integrity. Even when she was an undersecretary of the Dept of Trade & Industry, he could have had a lucrative career being on retainer as the lawyer of garment manufacturers and exporters–and though this was legal, my father opted not to take on these clients because it still raised an ethical question of a conflict of interest since my mother was in charge of the Garments & Textile Export Board. If at that time, my father opted not to make money even though it was legal because it might cast doubt on my mother’s integrity, he will not do anything moreso now that she is the highest officer of the land. Even today, you never heard him make money or “commission” out of the donations for the athletes in preparation for the SEA Games and the Olympics, because he made sure that the money went directly between the sponsors and the particular sports associations or athletes, and never passing through his hands.
Obviously these accusations thrown at him by politicians are
politically motivated, because he was fat and was rich to begin with, and made an easy target.

During the time of President Ramos I remember there was also some
issue about a government bidding that was questioned by the losing bidder, but we all accepted that this was just sour graping by the loser. The only difference today is that the losing bidder sour graping is the former speaker’s son, who thinks there is no ethical or legal problem going for government contracts which will pass through congress.

People say that there have been a lot of accusations thrown at my
father, so these must be true since “where there’s smoke, there’s
fire.” My response is: Sure, if the fire was caused by ARSON. In other words, it was the arsonists who actually caused the destruction, then pointed to others to deflect blame from themselves. So many times, the people who actually make money from whatever deals do so using my father’s name even though he is not at all involved, and then when they get caught, they point an accusing finger at him while pocketing the money they made. I question the timing of this supposedly new revelation to something that has been scrapped–which only adds more of the same based on vague statements, fiction and creative embellishments on conversations the “witness” was not actually privy
to–which comes after a change in leadership in congress, I suppose still part of the “valedictory” of the previous leadership.

Why do people want to destroy my mother? Because she has tried very hard to take out the institutionalized corruption, so the way they fight back is to try to destroy my family’s reputation. This concerted effort to smear her reputation began the minute she resigned from the cabinet of her predecessor, and has gone on unrelented. Unfortunately many people don’t understand this, that the corruption has been built up for at least two decades, and pervades not only government but society in general, and it will probably take at least that many years to wipe it out of our system, especially when those entrenched are fighting back and fighting dirty not to be unseated.

The reason the economy is doing well and foreign investors are back with billion dollar private investments, numbers we haven’t seen in more than a decade, is that my mother has concentrated on the policy and on running the government and making the difficult decisions, and these are now bearing fruit, and all the next president has to do is to keep our course steady. She hasn’t concerned herself with how the media or the political plotters portray her. She has made the unpopular but necessary decisions for the good of the economy and the country.

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I want to add that these billion dollar private investors which
are multinational companies that are happy with the policies of my
mother, and these are a part of the reason they invest or increase
their investments. None of them have complained that my family asked for “commission”, unlike complaints made during the past
administration. This is what many of their global CEOs said at the
World Economic Forum in Davos, during a dinner on the Philippines,
where those who have already invested in the country even enticed others to do so. What these CEOs feared was that after my mother’s administration the next president might change policies and might not understand the importance of her economic and fiscal reforms. She actually assured them that despite the rhetoric from those already running for president, that most of them want their investments and the jobs they generate to continue. Besides, she has done the difficult work of wrestling to get these economic and fiscal reforms institutionalized through legislation. All they have to do is reap the benefits of what we are already beginning to achieve in economic growth and social upliftment.

Luli M. Arroyo