FDC joins call for PNoy to resign, says Aquino administration is elitist, abusive, inept
(UPDATE - 1:12 p.m.) MANILA - A multi-sectoral coalition engaged in policy advocacy campaign on Friday joined calls for President Benigno Aquino III to step down, saying his administration was “elitist, abusive and incompetent.”
Militant groups underscored the broad undercurrents of dissent and disaffection, not just with President Aquino’s much-maligned handling of Masasapano but also the spillover of issues on other fronts, economic, political and diplomatic.
“The facts are as clear as day and they are damning. To sit back and wait till Aquino’s term of office ends is to deliberately ignore his monumental transgressions. We are all morally obligated to speak out and join the fight,” the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) said in a statement read in a news conference.
“At the same time, we deplore the scare tactics being deployed by the Aquino administration and its coterie of court jesters and sycophants who try to obfuscate the issue by diverting it to a pointless discussion on who will take his place. We, likewise, reject the notion that to acquiesce to the swapping of one set of elites for another is the height of democratic participation in this country,” FDC added.
The group’s demand for Aquino’s resignation added to the chorus of voices, mostly from militant groups and lawmakers, who said that it was time for the President to step down.
Manila hostage crisis
Since the August 2010 Manila hostage crisis that led to the death of several Hong Kong nationals, FDC said that the Aquino administration continued to be haunted by “tragedy” due to chief executive’s incompetence.
It said that the Aquino administration has been implementing policies that have worsened the country’s social, economic and political condition. It cited the following:
• From 2010-2014, the Philippine debt ballooned by 16.52% and has now reached P7.65 trillion. Borrowed funds were used to plug perennial revenue shortfalls for the national expenditure program. Aquino continued to prioritize debt-servicing including that of fraudulent loans that hardly benefited the people. The budget was being systematically plundered and misused by government officials and politicians. And. instead of calling for debt cancellation or moratorium of debt servicing in the wake of the devastation caused by Yolanda, Aquino incurred US$2 billion in new loans from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank.
• The Aquino government still embraces neo-liberal prescriptions for the economy such as deregulation, privatization, and liberalization. This is illustrated by privatization programs in key sectors such as water through projects like the P24.4 Bulacan Bulk Water Supply project and the P18.7 billion Kaliwa Dam. The results of such directions have been disastrous for the Filipino. Poverty incidence rose to 25.8% and rice prices skyrocketed by 12 percent in the first half of 2014. The Social Weather Stations (SWS) estimated the jobless rate at the end of 2014 at 27% of the labor force, or 12.4 million Filipinos. This has prompted the UN International Labor Organization to warn of social unrest in the midst of increasing unemployment.
• The Philippines has the highest residential electricity rates in Asia, while around 2.7 million Filipino households remain deprived of access to electricity. The regime continued to prop up the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) despite its monumental failure for 13 years to deliver on its promise to provide affordable and accessible, steady energy supply to the Filipino people. The public’s intense sufferings over incessant and prohibitive electricity rates, have spawned mass protests and the clamor to repeal or overhaul EPIRA. The power industry remained controlled and manipulated by a few industry players who are the regime’s patrons and main beneficiaries as they continued to rake in billions of profits in collusion with concerned agencies and officials.
• The Aquino government’s pretensions as a champion of climate change solutions are easily unmasked by its energy and economic policies that exacerbate climate change, and its dismal record of effectively responding to climate –induced disasters, like Sendong, and recently, its continuing failure to deliver effective relief to millions of victims of typhoon Yolanda/Hyan. The regime’s energy program and power industry is mainly fueled by dirty and harmful energy: around 14 coal plants spewing toxic emissions run the country’s power needs, with at least 38 more being planned for construction in the next few months and years. The government has also abandoned its support for strong southern positions in the COP 14 negotiations in Lima, Peru—which helped weaken the southern countries and might help pave the way for a very bad new global Climate deal in Paris, this coming December.
• Agriculture and manufacturing have been all but abandoned in favor of quick-fix programs such as rent-seeking property development, a bloated service sector, OFW remittances, low-value added call centers, and the dole-out scheme of the World Bank and ADB-funded conditional cash transfer (CCT). Key social justice programs have reached an impasse. An incompetent and clueless bureaucracy allowed the agrarian reform program to lapse without completing the land distribution component, misrepresented its achievements, and turned a blind eye to reversals that have taken place such as harassments of land reform beneficiaries, massive land conversions and cancellations of land awards.
• Aquino’s term has been characterized by aggressive efforts to weaken democratic institutions. When his own appointees to the Supreme Court spurned his bid to keep the Disbursement Acceleration Program and declared it unconstitutional, he turned on them too and, in an unprecedented move, openly rejected the Supreme Court’s unfavorable ruling. If the President’s initial vacillation on the scrapping of the PDAF was explained away by some as owing to genuine concern about its supposed benefits, his stubborn defense of the DAP unmasked his government’s true nature as just another abusive, elitist, trapo administration.
• The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), secretly hatched both by the US and the Philippine governments, and at the expense of the Philippine Constitutional provisions against war and nuclear weapons on Philippine soil, is a glaring act of betrayal of Philippine sovereignty and national interests. Ironically, the almost permanent stationing of U.S. troops in various areas of the country have only made the country less secure and dependent on foreign assistance.
• The Mamasapano tragedy, the responsibility of which both the PNP Board of Inquiry and Senate reports have laid squarely at the doorsteps of Malacanang, have prejudiced not just the fate of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law but has also derailed the quest for peace in Mindanao-Sulu. Aquino’s reaction to this latest tragedy has been to wash his hands of any culpability and pass the blame to his subordinates.
For his part, Renato M. Reyes, Jr., the secretary general of BAYAN, said President Aquino, as commander-in-chief of all the armed forces and chief architect of foreign policy, should explain if he knew of the involvement of the United States prior to, and during, the Mamasapano operation.
From the time the incident happened, in his many public pronouncements since, the President has not addressed the issue of US involvement.
But, Reyes said the issue is of crucial importance, especially if the US was dictating, directing, or influencing in any way, the actions of the PNP SAF as well as the AFP.
“We ... challenge the President to speak in no uncertain terms regarding the participation of a foreign government in a domestic operation,” Reyes said.
Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said: “The reports of both the PNP Board of Inquiry and the Senate on the Mamasapano carnage sidetracked the seven civilian casualties during the Mamasapano carnage and the hundreds of residents who were displaced during the operation. They, too, were victims of the US-Aquino’s botched Oplan Wolverine/Exodus. They, too, should figure in Aquino’s accountability.”
Meanwhile, Anakpawis Partylist Rep. Fernando Hicap expressed the view that “Aquino’s lying and cover-up spree” on the Mamasapano issue, and failure to solve socio-economic problems, “are slowly talking its toll in his government. It is deepening his isolation with the ordinary masses of peasants, workers, urban poor and even among the professionals who bear the brunt of high cost of basic commodities and services.”
Aquino’s presidency “is an insult to the Filipino people with his continuing mix-up mainly because of the botched Mamasapano operation.”
“He is taking the Filipino people for fools, thinking we could still be deceived; all that we got from Aquino were lies since his first speech on Mamasapano until now,” Hicap said during the protest in Mendiola led by Noynoy Out Now! Alliance and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan).
Hicap was referring to Aquino’s statement “that he knew little of the Mamasapano operation and had many questions about it, when all along, he was a key figure in planning and execution.”
Anakpawis also condemned “Aquino’s mockery of the Filipino workers’ socially just demand for a wage increase when the regional wage board for National Capital Region approved a measly P15 hike in minimum wage.” It referred to “dagdag sweldo”, the add-on wage, as “dagdag insulto (add-on insult)”, alluding to impoverished workers who could barely make ends meet.
Former Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño, a key leader of the broad coalition, Noynoy Out Now! (NOW!), underscored that the March 1 to 7 Pulse Asia survey showing 58% of Filipinos, or more than the majority, being open to the idea of President Aquino’s resignation, “is a very significant change in public opinion and shows how Aquino’s support has dramatically eroded.”
“As to the 42% who are against resignation, a significant number probably don’t want Vice President Binay to take over or are merely tolerating Aquino’s failed leadership since the 2016 elections are just around the corner. It’s now up for groups like NOW! to convince them that there are other options,” he said.
Many are also doubtful if the 2016 elections will lead to real changes in the political and economic system. Thus NOW!’s call for a regime change is gaining ground," said Casiño.
Lira Dalangin-Fernandez, InterAksyon.com