Ahead of the anniversary of the people
power uprising, a youth group said that the failed promise of EDSA has laid the
fertile ground for the revival of authoritarianism and a revision of history. “As
working class millennials—community youth and young workers—we are witness to,
nay victims of, the disaster of three decades of EDSA democracy,” declared Ryan
Bocacao of PM-Kabataan, the youth wing of the militant Partido Manggagawa.
Tomorrow members of PM-Kabataan together
with workers from PM are joining a mass at the La Salle Greenhills sponsored by
the AMRSP and iDefend, and then later the rally at the People Power Monument.
Meanwhile the PM chapter in Cebu is participating in a multisectoral rally at downtown
Gaisano Metro tomorrow afternoon.
Both PM and PM-Kabataan expressed
apprehension at the suppression of political dissent with the arrest of Sen.
Leila de Lima. “Workers defend civil liberties because political freedom is a
necessity in fighting for and winning labor demands,” Bocacao explained.
He added that “To those living in the
purgatory of the EDSA democracy, the hell of martial law is little comfort. No
surprise then that purveyors of fake news, creative imagination and alternative
facts are having a field day. EDSA’s epic fail created a vacuum that is being
filled by an authoritarian throwback.”
“Poverty, inequality and injustice have
persisted and plagued our country since 1986. True these were a pestilence even
during the Marcos dictatorship despite recent attempts to prettify the thingy
called martial law. The infamous infrastructure projects of Marcos which keeps
popping up on social media were no more than just opportunities to rob the
people while pushing generations of Filipinos deep into debt. The plunder of
the national treasury and the systematic human rights violations by the state still
have no parallel during the post-EDSA regimes. Abuse of power is necessarily
worse under a dictatorial regime which does not have to bother with the niceties
of due process, civil liberties, press freedom or a political opposition,” the
group insisted.
Bocacao averred that “All those
political—and social, we should not forget—contradictions during the 14 years
of the Marcos dictatorship finally exploded in that historic event called the
people power uprising. While the yearning for democracy was central to EDSA,
the cause of social justice—the demand of workers for rights, of peasants for
land, of students for reform, among others—was no less a key impetus. Yet under
the leadership of the Dilawan, to be exact the elite faction opposed to the
Marcos dictatorship, the democracy built after EDSA was only a caricature.”
“The EDSA democracy is a skeleton
without flesh. The formality is there but the substance is lacking. Elections
are a farce. Instead of an exercise in democracy, it is a rigodon for dynasties
and warlords. Regime after regime played deaf to the cry for social justice as globalization
dictated by the IMF and WTO was embraced. Cheap labor was used as come on for
foreign investors. Farmers buckled under the onslaught of cheap imports. Social
services suffered as the national budget was decimated by debt outlays, a big
part of which was to pay loans taken out by Marcos. With a bleak future in the
country, millions of Filipinos migrated despite all the sacrifices and
difficulties,” Bocacao stated.
He ended “Is a return to the past the
answer to the misery of the present? We say no, as young Filipinos who wish the
best for our country. Is it time to move on instead of celebrate EDSA as the
Duterte administration say? We say no, for we believe the real alternative is
to level up EDSA. People power is hollow without democratizing power. Empowering
the people—providing economic security to the masses and also their
participation in policy decisions—will pull the rug from underneath historical
revisionists and wannabee dictators.”
Partido Manggagawa-Kabataan
February 24, 2017
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