In response to House passing MACR bill:
Student and youth form “MACR Watch,” hold protest
today at Senate
In response to the passing last night by the
House of Representatives on third and final reading of the proposed bill
lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12 years, student and
youth groups are formed a “MACR Watch” and held a noisy protest today at the
Senate.
The opposition to the lowering of the minimum
wage of criminal responsibility continues to escalate with more groups holding
protests. Today youthful protesters from the student council of the Polytechnic
University of the Philippines, the student party PUP Speak, Pwersa Youth and
Partido Manggagawa-Kabataan marched from the Film Center to the Senate complex
to call on senators to reject the proposed bill that seeks to criminalize
children aged 12 years old and above. The protest follows on the heels of a
similar protest yesterday along Katipunan Ave. by scores of Ateneo students led
by the student council.
The young protesters carried a streamer with the
call “Paaralan hindi kulungan para sa mga batang Pilipino! Not 9! Not 12! No to
the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility!” The groups announced that
they are forming a “MACR Watch” that will monitor the deliberations by Senate
on the proposed bill.
The various youth groups are all part of the
Partido Manggagawa (PM) partylist coalition. Dhel Pulanco, the groups’
spokesperson, declared that “The opposition to making children criminals, along
with the bloody war on drugs by the Duterte administration, is part of the
election platform of PM.” Pulanco is third nominee of PM which is among the 134
partylist organizations that the Comelec recently announced is accredited.
“We challenge the Senate to engage in
evidence-based policy-making instead of impressionistic law-making. In last
Friday’s hearing at the Senate, numerous experts spoke against the proposed
bill based on tons of scientific research and case studies of children in
conflict with the law. Yet committee chair Sen. Gordon abruptly ended the
hearing and declared that he stands by his unsubstantiated opinion that
children aged 12 years old should be arrested and imprisoned. This same modus
operandi of unscientific legislative work animated the House when it passed the
MACR bill,” Pulanco elaborated.
He added that “The present Juvenile Justice and
Welfare Law has enough provisions to address the concerns of some about
incidents of children in conflict with the law. It must be said that these
incidents are decreasing according to the PNP. Address the root causes not the
symptoms of the problem of children in conflict with the law. For example, the
prevalence of child labor is a much bigger issue but it is not being addressed
by the administration and Congress.”
The groups vowed that the action today will not
be the end of the protests against the proposed bill. Pulanco averred that
“Along with other student, youth, human rights and civil society organizations,
we will campaign until the proposed bill is killed.”
January 29, 2019
