The groups Partido Manggagawa (PM) and Kalipunan ng Kilusang Masa (Kalipunan) which unites workers, farmers,
women and students will lead a protest action this afternoon at 5:30 pm against
the return of the Marcoses to power.
“EDSA’s
epic fail is engendering a throwback to dictatorship. Since EDSA’s let-down is
plain to see, memes of a Marcos golden age look like fact rather than fiction,”
averred Judy Miranda, PM Secretary-General.
The highlight
of the protest is a noise barrage and candle lighting at the People Power
Monument. The riders’ group Kagulong will assemble at Mall of Asia then hold a
“unity ride” to join Kalipunan.
“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 keep 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,” Miranda explained.
She
added 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.”
“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 a 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. 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,” Miranda
concluded.
February 25, 2022
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