Philippine Senator Benigno Aquino III, set to become the nation’s next president based on an almost-complete vote count, began assembling his dream team of Cabinet members yesterday as he braced to crack down on graft and some of Asia’s most violent rebellions.
Aquino was leading Monday’s nine-way presidential race with 41.8 percent of votes from about 88.56 percent of the precincts, a government-accredited watchdog said.
His closest rival, ousted president Joseph Estrada, had 26.5 percent, the group said.
The Commission on Elections stopped updating the media on the result of the presidential race after the lawyers of some candidates protested, saying a congressional count scheduled for May 24 could be pre-empted, elections commissioner Lucenito Tagle said.
Only Congress can proclaim the winner for president and vice president.
“Our country badly needs this shot in the arm,” said Corazon Soliman, the first to accept a Cabinet post from Aquino. “We have been given a second chance to do this right.”
Soliman defected, along with several other Cabinet members, from Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration in July 2005 amid a vote-rigging scandal that nearly forced her from power. Soliman and her colleagues had called for Arroyo’s resignation and backed Aquino.
A committee will help Aquino form a Cabinet before he takes his oath on June 30, selecting people “with integrity, honesty and no track record of corrupt practices,” Soliman said.
Aquino announced on Tuesday that Soliman accepted his offer to return to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. He repeated a campaign promise to use his first days in the presidency to wage a battle against corruption.
“I will not only not steal, but I’ll have the corrupt arrested,” Aquino, 50, told reporters in his first comments since Monday’s polls.
Massive corruption has long dogged the Philippines, tainting electoral politics and skimming billions of public funds in a country already struggling to pay off a huge foreign debt.
Bloated government contracts, especially those signed in the final six months under Arroyo, “will be reviewed before honored,” Soliman said.
In a bid to save money, Aquino said he would avoid foreign trips and trim his Cabinet. During her nine years in power, Arroyo enlarged her Cabinet to more than 40 heads of departments and agencies.
Arroyo drew criticism yesterday after appointing an ally as Supreme Court chief justice — a move they said was aimed at shielding her from graft investigations promised by her likely successor.
Aquino sees the issues of corruption and budget prudence as linked — his fiscal strategy involves eliminating pork-barrel spending and pursuing those who avoid paying taxes and duties, which he hopes will remove any need to impose higher tax rates.
“We will start prosecuting the evaders. We will start picking the low-lying fruit, the easiest to pick,” Aquino told reporters in an interview on Tuesday. “Before we start imposing new taxes, we should be collecting the taxes that are already there.”
During his campaign, Aquino also vowed to investigate the highly popular Arroyo and her scandal-tainted administration.
However, the outgoing president still plans to be a political force. She has won a seat in Congress in the election and Philippine media say she hopes to become house speaker and use this position to challenge the power of the presidency.
Arroyo has said she will ensure a smooth transition before her term ends on June 30, but her appointment of Renato Corona to head the Supreme Court sparked renewed accusations that she is trying to put allies in key positions before leaving office.
Corona was her chief of staff when Arroyo was vice president and also for a year after she became president in 2001.
Of 15 Supreme Court judges, 14 will be Arroyo appointees when Corona replaces current Chief Justice Reynato Puno, who retires on Monday, with one position remaining vacant.
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