The Philippine government said on Monday that those who were involved in the fabrication of a tape conversation allegedly by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will be brought to justice.

"We would like to assure the Filipino public that this plot will like all other similarly desperate plots that the opposition has hatched, fail to derail the government's ongoing political and economic development agenda. We further assure the country and the world that the plotters will be brought to justice," said presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye.

Bunye has accused some opposition members of trying to destabilize the country by fabricating a tape conversation in which Arroyo allegedly talked with an election commissioner about how to rig the 2004 presidential election.

"In the past 48 hours, there has been much speculation about the alleged existence of audio tapes of a supposed conversation involving President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, which would purport to place the president in a negative light," said Bunye.

He said intelligence investigations "on the veracity of these reports have uncovered the curious existence of not one, but two tapes, consisting of two different versions of the same alleged conversation."

The spokesman said one of the tapes was "doctored, altered and revised version of the other."

"While we cannot at this time confirm the authenticity of either version, we can today confirm, by virtue of these findings, another opposition plot to destabilize the administration of President Arroyo," he said.

Describing the newest plot as "by far the most devious and desperate," Bunye said it involved an illegal bugging of a conversation (of President Arroyo) and subsequent electronic doctoring, alteration and revision of that conversation "to introduce elements that were not really there."

Source: Xinhua