MANILA - Outspoken Archbishop Oscar Cruz joined a chorus of growing public dissent over alleged government corruption yesterday by declaring that the "national leadership was beyond redemption."

Without naming embattled President Gloria Arroyo, Archbishop Cruz urged the government to take note of public anger over alleged corruption in a cancelled 329-million-dollar national broadband network project with China 's ZTE Corp.

"The court of public opinion has already formed a judgment," he was quoted on the GMA7 television website as saying.

"The general public appreciates credible individuals and simply uses common sense in firmly deciding who are truthful and who are liars, who are upright and who are corrupt," Cruz said, adding the "national leadership was already beyond redemption in its moral bankruptcy."

Although Cruz does not speak for the powerful Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines , he commands widespread support, especially among anti-Arroyo groups.

"Long and deeply buried in a huge pile of rotten and rotting garbage, the ruling administration has become one big living infection already immune to remedial sanitation," he told GMA7.

"There are groups of individuals among the professionals and business people, in the academia and workforce, among the employees and labourers, who are appalled at the gross misdeeds eventually appended to the incumbent national leadership," he said.

Meanwhile, more than 4,000 people attended a special mass Sunday for one of the whistleblowers in the ZTE scandal, Rodolfo Lozada, organised by former president Corazon Aquino.

Held in the gymnasium of a local Catholic school in Manila , priests, nuns and former cabinet ministers clapped and cheered when calls were made for Arroyo to step down.

At the end of the hour-long mass the audience stood up, clenched fists raised in the air and sang "Bayan Ko," a song made popular during the People-Power protests which brought down the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

On Friday, around 3,000 people took part in an anti-Arroyo rally in the financial district of Makati in Manila over the growing scandal surrounding the defunct ZTE deal.

The Philippine Senate has been probing accusations that Arroyo's husband and a presidential ally had been promised huge bribes so that ZTE could win the broadband contract.

Arroyo has since cancelled the deal but the investigation received new momentum after Lozada, a mid-level government official, earlier this month said he was present when some of the alleged bribes were discussed.*AFP

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