Philippines’ Aquino set for angry ‘State of Nation’ address

MANILA, July 24 AFP - Philippine President Benigno Aquino is set to launch a blistering attack on his predecessor and flesh out an anti-corruption drive when he makes his first “State of the Nation” address on Monday.

Aquino, who is enjoying record public support three weeks into the job, has signalled his speech to parliament will outline the dire economic problems that he says he inherited from former president Gloria Arroyo.

“The work ahead will not be easy over the next few years. Nearly all the funds intended for use over the next few months have been stolen,” the straight-talking leader told an army parade on Friday in an apparent preview.

Aquino later told reporters that his administration had discovered some major irregularities by Arroyo’s government, and that he intended to use his speech to tell his countrymen about them.

“You will be very, very surprised at the things that we have discovered,” Aquino said.

“I think the common reaction was, among those who already know, the expression of the mouth was: ‘Ha, they did that! Why did they do that?’ There is really no sense, no rhyme, no reason.”

Adding to the political tensions, Arroyo will be in parliament to listen to the speech because she won a seat in the House of Representatives in the May elections.

And although many of her allies defected to Aquino’s Liberal Party, Arroyo — who was required by constitutional term limits to stand down as president — still has a power base in parliament.

Sitting alongside her in the house will be two of her sons and two in-laws, while she still retains some loyalty from other politicians.

Aquino, 50, won the national elections in a landslide after promising to fight the massive corruption that he said festered during Arroyo’s nearly 10 years in power.

A public opinion poll released last week showed more than 80 percent of the nation trusted the son of democracy heroine Corazon Aquino.

“The problem with that is that there is no way to go but down,” said T. Lloydon Bautista, political economy professor at Manila’s University of Asia and the Pacific. Bautista said Aquino had three months to show how he would fight corruption and demonstrate his team could deliver basic services, or his popularity would start to fall.

“These are issues that affect the public and he has to confront them,” Bautista told AFP.

Aquino’s first three weeks in office have shown how tough his job will be in governing the chaotic nation of 92 million people, a third of whom live in dire poverty.