Negrenses
Call for GMA’s Resignation
President’s performance
gets low rating
Thousands
of Negrenses took to the streets to join their counterparts nationwide in
denouncing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s state-of-the-nation address
July 28. Businessmen and transport operators joined big organizations in giving
the president’s performance a below-5 rating.
By
Karl G. Ombion
Bulatlat.com / Cobra-ans
BACOLOD
CITY - Militant groups here joined their counterparts across the nation July 28
in denouncing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and calling for her and Defense
Secretary Angelo Reyes’ immediate resignation.
Nine
big organizations, including small entrepreneurs and transport operators rated
the president’s performance below-5.
About
1,000 protesters belonging to the militant organizations allied with Bayan and
Bayan Muna electoral party-list organization took over the streets of Bacolod
and ended with a protest-rally at the city’s fountain of justice, on the
occasion of Macapagal-Arroyo’s third state of the nation address (SONA).
The
protesters took turns lambasting Macapagal-Arroyo who, they charged, “failed
to answer the basic question: how do the people fare?”
Felipe
Gelle, Bayan-Negros spokesperson, said Arroyo harped on the supposed
“accomplishments” of her administration knowing that these were “farthest
from the truth.”
Contrary
to Macapagal-Arroyo’s claims, Gelle said, her administration has only driven
the people deeper into poverty. In Negros in particular, he said, the number of
poor and homeless people has increased several-fold under the present
administration.
“Worse,
she had the gall to claim that prices stabilized during her term and there were
no increases in jeepney fare, which is, as everyone knows, an outright lie,”
Gelle added.
Fragile
government
Gelle
also said that the short-lived mutiny in Makati July 27 only exposed the
fragility of the Macapagal-Arroyo government and that it is unfit to rule.
“She must step down,” the Bayan-Negros spokesperson said.
Bayan
Muna coordinator Alejandro Deoma, on the other hand, said the recent mutiny by
special forces soldiers calling themselves the Magdalo faction only serves to
highlight the deepening political crisis of the ruling system.
The
Makati mutiny might have been aborted, Deoma said, but that will not stop future
rebellions within the Armed Forces, and eventually the majority of the people
into taking up arms, against the rotten regime, he added.
Richard
Sarrosa, chairman of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas-Negros, on the other
hand, said Macapagal-Arroyo’s presidency could be characterized by its brutal
treatment of farmers through relentless military operations in the countryside.
In
Negros, Sarrosa said, the number of cases of peasant lands taken back by
landowners and agribusiness has been bigger than the agrarian department’s
hyped stories of land distribution successes. Just last week, three families of
peasants with certificates of land transfer (CLTs) in neighboring Bago City have
lost their lands reportedly because a local court succumbed to pressures by a
prominent landowner in the province.
Meanwhile,
nine big organizations here rated the president’s performance below 5
considering her broken promises during the past two and a half years of her
presidency. Those who rated included a province-wide association of small
businesses, and a regional association of trucking operators.
The
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)-Negros also called
Macapagal-Arroyo’s SONA “flight of fantasy” detached from the “real
situation of the country” and the people as it lashed out at the
administration for trying to paint a picture that “all is well” despite the
raging crisis.
This
as Senate President Franklin Drilon said over a local radio station that the
best part of the president’s SONA was “what she did not say,” as he hinted
that the president might be running in the May 2004 polls.
Drilon,
interviewed by local radio stations, said “the president did not mention that
this was her last SONA, which means that she would still give another SONA next
year.” Bulatlat.com
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