Drilon cites need to implement urgent reforms in ARMM

Senator Franklin Drilon stressed on Monday the urgent need to implement reforms in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in view of the failure of the region’s current leadership to prosecute officials accused of graft and corruption involving billions of pesos from taxpayers’ money. ”I did not see from the statements today of the incumbent OIC (officer-in-charge) that he is capable of making the appropriate reforms in the area in order to prevent these abuses from happening again,” Drilon said after the Senate committee on finance submitted for plenary debates the ARMM’s proposed P12.4 billion budget for 2012. Asked by the senators what the present ARMM leadership has done to correct the rampant graft and corruption committed by the previous administration of the region, acting Governor Ansaruddin Adiong said the investigation has already been passed on to the national leadership of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).