President Gloria Arroyo yesterday said that threats to her presidency remained despite a massive crackdown on leftist legislators and military officers accused of a failed plot to topple her government.
In a statement, Arroyo warned her opponents that she would "sternly enforce the rule of law in the streets" despite having lifted a state of national emergency she declared on Feb. 24 to quell the alleged plot.
"I am directing the police and the military to expose all residual and anticipated threats of destabilization even as we push the normalization process," Arroyo said.
"We are fully aware that some groups have not ceased in their attempts to undermine our democratic way of life," she said.
The government however had the resources to counter any further attempts, Arroyo said, stressing a "solid military and police chain of command."
"We are one step ahead of the enemies of the state," she said.
Arroyo on Feb. 24 invoked emergency powers to thwart what she claimed was an alliance between communists and "military adventurists" aimed at toppling her. She banned street protests, enforced tighter rules on the press and ordered the arrests of officers and legislators allegedly involved in the plot.
Today, state prosecutors are to formally launch an investigation into five leftist legislators implicated in the plot.
The investigation will determine whether they should be indicted on charges of coup d'etat and rebellion, senior state prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco said yesterday.
The five -- Satur Ocampo, Liza Maza, Joel Virador, Teodoro Casino and Rafael Mariano -- were among 16 opposition figures whom the police have recommended should be charged by the justice department.
The five have sought sanctuary in their offices at the House of Representatives and accused Arroyo of employing tactics similar to those of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. A sixth congressman, Crispin Beltran, was earlier arrested.
The legislators have openly called on Arroyo to quit and have been at the forefront of anti-government street protests. If charged and convicted, they could be jailed for up to 20 years.
Arroyo's political luster has dimmed since she survived an impeachment vote in Congress last year over charges she rigged the May 2004 election.
"The holding of the PI [preliminary investigation] at Congress is out of respect for our lawmakers," said Emmanuel Velasco, who heads a special anti-rebellion task force at the justice department.
Prosecutors are also slated to present today a "star witness" who has intimate knowledge of the five's alleged involvement, Velasco said without elaborating.
"There is obviously an alliance [between communist rebels and military men]," said Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales, adding that documents seized from the rebels would prove this.
Apart from the leftists, the military has detained 25 soldiers including eight officers mostly from the elite Army Scout Ranger unit.
The group is being investigated for alleged links to the plot, while their commander, Brigadier General Danilo Lim, was removed on the day Arroyo assumed emergency powers. Two Marine officials and the head of a police commando unit were also sacked.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS