PM supports Escudero’s call for independent body to investigate poll cheating

Press Release

July 20, 2011

The Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) today expressed support for Sen. Chiz Escudero’s call for an independent body headed by a retired Supreme Court justice to conduct an investigation into the allegations of cheating in the elections of 2004 and 2007.

“It is high time to put a closure to the question of who really won the 2004 elections. Arising from the cover up during the regime of Gloria Arroyo, it is to the interest of truth and justice that an independent body now hears evidence and testimony of witnesses such as Zaldy Ampatuan and Lintang Bedol,” stated Renato Magtubo, PM national chair.

Magtubo also called on President Benigno Aquino III to include the burning issue of poll reregulates in his SONA speech. “We want to hear in his SONA PNoy’s personal position on the demand for an investigation of the cheating in the 2004 and 2007 elections,” Magtubo insisted.

However Magtubo also challenged Aquino to go beyond the issues of cheating and corruption in his SONA speech. “We know that PNoy will highlight his administration’s accomplishments in the arena of stamping corruption but poverty will not be solved by good governance alone. Poverty can only be eradicated by radical reforms in the economic and social arena that to attacks the iniquitous distribution of wealth in the country,” he elaborated.

PM is planning protests before and during the SONA to underscore its critique of the Aquino administrations programs. On Friday morning, PM will participate in a thousand-strong mobilization of pro-RH bill advocates at Mendiola. Meanwhile on Friday noon, PM will lead a rally at the

Roxas Boulevard

office of the Philippine Export Zone Authority to assail the agency for its role in the suppression of the right to organize in ecozones.

On Monday, PM will join other labor groups in another Mendiola rally to criticize the administration’s anti-labor policies including its tolerance of contractual employment. In the afternoon, PM will participate in a broad mobilization of militant organizations at the Batasan to challenge President Aquino on the pro-globalization framework of the Philippine Development Plan and the public-private partnership.

“PNoy’s decision in the Philippine Airlines labor dispute over outsourcing and contractualization, and recently his praise for Hanjin’s billion-dolar investments but silence over the shipyard’s record as a graveyard for workers rights are the most concrete illustration of the contradiction between his anti-corruption posture and his pro-globalization agenda,” Magtubo argued.