Negrenses Call for GMA’s Resignation
President’s performance gets low rating

Thousands of Negrenses took to the streets to join their counterparts nationwide in denouncing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s state-of-the-nation address July 28. Businessmen and transport operators joined big organizations in giving the president’s performance a below-5 rating.

By Karl G. Ombion
Bulatlat.com / Cobra-ans

BACOLOD CITY - Militant groups here joined their counterparts across the nation July 28 in denouncing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and calling for her and Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes’ immediate resignation.

Nine big organizations, including small entrepreneurs and transport operators rated the president’s performance below-5.

About 1,000 protesters belonging to the militant organizations allied with Bayan and Bayan Muna electoral party-list organization took over the streets of Bacolod and ended with a protest-rally at the city’s fountain of justice, on the occasion of Macapagal-Arroyo’s third state of the nation address (SONA).

The protesters took turns lambasting Macapagal-Arroyo who, they charged, “failed to answer the basic question: how do the people fare?”

Felipe Gelle, Bayan-Negros spokesperson, said Arroyo harped on the supposed “accomplishments” of her administration knowing that these were “farthest from the truth.”

Contrary to Macapagal-Arroyo’s claims, Gelle said, her administration has only driven the people deeper into poverty. In Negros in particular, he said, the number of poor and homeless people has increased several-fold under the present administration.

“Worse, she had the gall to claim that prices stabilized during her term and there were no increases in jeepney fare, which is, as everyone knows, an outright lie,” Gelle added.

Fragile government

Gelle also said that the short-lived mutiny in Makati July 27 only exposed the fragility of the Macapagal-Arroyo government and that it is unfit to rule. “She must step down,” the Bayan-Negros spokesperson said.

Bayan Muna coordinator Alejandro Deoma, on the other hand, said the recent mutiny by special forces soldiers calling themselves the Magdalo faction only serves to highlight the deepening political crisis of the ruling system.

The Makati mutiny might have been aborted, Deoma said, but that will not stop future rebellions within the Armed Forces, and eventually the majority of the people into taking up arms, against the rotten regime, he added.

Richard Sarrosa, chairman of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas-Negros, on the other hand, said Macapagal-Arroyo’s presidency could be characterized by its brutal treatment of farmers through relentless military operations in the countryside.

In Negros, Sarrosa said, the number of cases of peasant lands taken back by landowners and agribusiness has been bigger than the agrarian department’s hyped stories of land distribution successes. Just last week, three families of peasants with certificates of land transfer (CLTs) in neighboring Bago City have lost their lands reportedly because a local court succumbed to pressures by a prominent landowner in the province.

Meanwhile, nine big organizations here rated the president’s performance below 5 considering her broken promises during the past two and a half years of her presidency. Those who rated included a province-wide association of small businesses, and a regional association of trucking operators.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)-Negros also called Macapagal-Arroyo’s SONA “flight of fantasy” detached from the “real situation of the country” and the people as it lashed out at the administration for trying to paint a picture that “all is well” despite the raging crisis.

This as Senate President Franklin Drilon said over a local radio station that the best part of the president’s SONA was “what she did not say,” as he hinted that the president might be running in the May 2004 polls.

Drilon, interviewed by local radio stations, said “the president did not mention that this was her last SONA, which means that she would still give another SONA next year.” Bulatlat.com

Back to top

We want to know what you think of this article.