sentiment of a child

This message was forwarded to me by a friend and I want to share it with you. I hope it sheds some light on the current crisis inflicted on our poor country by selfish interest groups with sinister plans.
"On bringing down my mother"
by Luli ArroyoMy 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 more so 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. But many of these politicians are either impatient, or want the old system back, or think that they can earn popular points by tearing her down.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. ===========Some people have also said that our economic numbers are meaningless, that the 7.1% growth is a farce because the gap between rich and poor is bigger now. I guess they also base that assertion on what Lozada overheard from somewhere. Actually, even the most recent SWS survey they so love to quote, the survey on self-rated poverty says that the number who think they are poor has decreased from the last time they did the survey. Meaning, people really feel the effects of economic upliftment. 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.