THOUSANDS of banner-bearing workers affiliated with the
militant Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM)
and SANLAKAS partylist coalition marched to the historic Mendiola Bridge
The groups used the occasion to call for the end of elite
rule and urged the poor to struggle against imperialist plunder this after
Malacanang concluded that it’s hosting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
forum weeks ago a resounding success.
“There is no fitting occasion for ordinary wage-earners to
highlight its discontent over the treachery of the ruling elite on the will and
welfare of the Filipino majority – other than the 152nd birth anniversary of
plebian hero Andres Bonifacio,” BMP leader, Leody de Guzman declared during the
protest.
Sonny Melencio of the Partido Lakas ng Masa said that, “The
political and economic systems need an overhaul. The stench of Philippine
society is reeking. We have a backward capitalist economy under a rotten system
of elite democracy. Post-Edsa 1986 democracy is nothing but the oligopoly of
the local elite that connives with foreign monopoly capital in their plunder of
the local economy through neoliberal economics. From Cory Aquino to Noynoy Aquino,
wealth and ownership was concentrated even more in the hands of the few”.
This year’s Bonifacio Day rally is different from the past
red-letter days, says SANLAKAS secretary-general Atty Aaron Pedrosa.
“First, we intend to send a strong message to all national
candidates that workers and the poor will be unforgiving in its criteria in
choosing the candidates that they will support and vote for. They would
likewise assail the candidates that pursue the same anti-labor and anti-poor
policies and programs pursued by the Aquino government,” Pedrosa said.
He furthered, “Second, this is an indignation rally for the
past five and a half years of unbearable hardship under Noynoy Aquino caused by
economic policies that favor transnational corporations such as the systematic
circumvention of the Constitutional right to security tenure through
contractualization, the rejection of higher tax exemptions to middle and lower
income, the tacit cheap labor policy, the K+12 law, tax incentives to mining
and other extractive investments, the denial of public services through
private-public partnerships.”
“And lastly, we are issuing a strong warning to traditional
politicians and their capitalist bankrollers who intend to cheat in the coming
elections as they attempt to secure their economic and political interests in a
post-Aquino regime. Their lust for power knows no bounds; it recognizes no
rules,” he clarified
In the same way that Gat Andres Bonifacio was robbed of the
presidency by the principalia and ilustrados at the Tejeros Convention, the
collective will of the Filipino masses – even if it is merely a choice of a
perceived lesser evil from the same local ruling class – would again be robbed
by an elitist faction that is seeking power by any means necessary,” the lawyer-activist
said.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=832730
Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) and SANLAKAS are groups that were formed following the ideological split that occurred within the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in the mid-to-late 1990s. The cadre that formed these groups broke away from the CPP. They rejected the primacy of the CPP's strategic line of protracted people's war in favor of participation in the democratic process. These groups form the core of the "rejectionist" camp. CPP-affiliated organizations make up the "reaffirmist" camp as continue to adhere to the principle of protracted peasant-based guerrilla war.
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