Localized online and offline protest activities were conducted Saturday
afternoon by chapters of Partido Manggagawa (PM) in different parts of the
country, two days before President Duterte delivers his last State of the
Nation Address (SONA) on Monday.
Areas that held local online protest activities include Metro Manila, Cavite,
Rizal, Bulacan, Bacolod, Cebu, Davao, and Tagum City.
According to Judy Miranda, PM Secretary-General, this is to highlight the
plight of workers and poor communities who suffered the most under Duterte’s
deficient and repressive style of governance.
“Ang ating mga komunidad ay hindi gaanong napapansin sa bangayan ng pulitika sa
itaas, samantalang sila ang tunay na nakakaranas ng kahirapan at saksi sa
nagaganap na karahasan at patayan sa buong bansa. Nasa komunidad ang totoong
SONA,” declared Miranda.
One of the issues to highlight is the unresolved killings of PM organizers.
Dennis Sequena, PM leader in Cavite, was shot dead by unknown assailants in
June 2019 while giving a lecture on basic trade unionism among ecozone workers.
PM organizer Orlando Abangan was killed in Talisay City, Cebu in September
2016, at the height of Duterte’s drug war. It is also in Cebu where a peaceful
and legitimate protest of retrenched MEPZ workers was met by arrests and
detention as in the case of the arrest of “Cebu 5” on November 30 last year.
Other unresolved killings of PM organizers were that of Victoriano Embang
(2012) and Rolando Pango (2014) in the island of Negros. These killings, the
group said, though they happened during the past administration, remains an
agenda of justice that the present administration has the duty to resolve.
Miranda said, “unresolved and unrelenting spate of killings and intensifying
trade union repression is a marked failure of the Duterte administration,
notwithstanding his epic fail on the issue of endo or contractualization, wage
hike, and its poor pandemic response.”
On SONA day, PM members with their “ENDO30” props will be joining the
“Despedida” rally led by the Movement against the Anti-Terrorism Act (MATA) at
the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) grounds.
PM will also be part of the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition Women’s Committee morning
contingent who will submit their findings and recommendations to the CHR on the
impact of COVID-19 protocols on human rights and labor rights.
24 July 2021
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