MANILA – Benigno Aquino III, the son of two heroes of democracy, told hundreds of thousands of people he would deliver on his promise to tackle entrenched corruption when he was sworn in as the Philippines’ 15th president yesterday.
In his first speech as president, Mr Aquino said he would fight poverty, improve the investment climate and seek a just resolution to a long-running Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the poor and mainly Catholic nation.
“My parents sought nothing less, and died for nothing less, than democracy, peace and prosperity,” Mr Aquino told an adoring crowd that police estimated at about half a million people.
“I am blessed by this legacy. I shall carry the torch forward,” he said at the ceremony at the Quirino Grandstand near Manila Bay in the old part of the capital.
Many in the crowd were dressed in yellow, the colour of the 1986 People Power revolution that drove dictator Ferdinand Marcos from office and swept Mr Aquino’s mother, Corazon, to power. Yellow confetti was sprinkled over the crowd from helicopters shortly before Mr Aquino took his presidential oath.
Mr Aquino’s first directive declared vacant about 4,000 executive positions in the bureaucracy, although he extended the contracts of key officers, particularly in the presidential palace, for at least 30 days to prevent disruption.
He also asked his cabinet to identify top spending priorities ahead of his submission of the 2011 budget in July or August.
Mr Aquino has to tame a budget deficit that reached nearly 4 per cent of GDP in 2009, which he said he will first do by enforcing existing tax laws to improve collections before considering any increase in tax rates.
Finance secretary Cesar Purisima said the new government had a mandate to implement more aggressively existing programmes against tax evaders and smugglers, with charges to be filed soon against individuals and business groups.
Prosecutions would encourage greater compliance, but the public also needed to accept that taxes had to be paid, he said.
“That’s an appeal to fellow Filipinos. You cannot just sit in your living room and say, ‘Well how are you going to improve the efficiency of tax collection?’ We need your help,” he said.
Outgoing president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did not stay for Mr Aquino’s inauguration, which was watched by former presidents Joseph Estrada and Fidel Ramos.
On Tuesday, Mr Aquino said he was setting up a “truth commission” to investigate allegations of corruption, electoral fraud and human rights abuses against Ms Arroyo. – (Reuters)