New Negros Alliance Seeks Arroyo Ouster

A new alliance of grassroots organizations and opposition parties calling for the ouster of the President showed its muscle when it led a big rally in Bacolod City last week. Another rally was also held in Dumaguete.

By Karl G. Ombion and Ranie Azue
Bulatlat

UNDER THE RAIN: Negros activists brave rainfall during SoNA rally, July 25.                                        Photo by Karl Ombion

BACOLOD CITY – Organized Negrenses have formed an alliance with middle forces and opposition groups called the Negros Movement for Moral Regeneration (NMMR), to move for the resignation of incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Led by the NMMR, cane workers, farmers, urban poor, clerics and laity, middle class, teachers and students, many coming from as far as remote upland barangays (villages), massed up in the morning for two separate rallies on July 25: one in Bacolod, Negros Occidental, and another in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. In Bacolod, about 10,000 rallyers braved heavy monsoon rains to stage their real state-of-the-nation (SONA); about 1,000 turned up in the Dumaguete rally.

The two rallies coincided with similar protest actions in Metro Manila, where close to 100,000 rallyers gathered along Commonweal Avenue in Quezon City, about a kilometer away from the Batasang Pambansa where the Congress was to resume session, as well in several other cities and town centers all over the country.

The protests were held as Macapagal-Arroyo prepared to deliver her SONA before Congress. The President is facing possible impeachment for alleged electoral fraud and jueteng (illegal numbers game) payoffs, among other charges.

Monsoon rains

By noontime, thousands had converged in Bacolod, beating drums and carrying huge streamers, banners and placards that bore calls and slogans for Macapagal-Arroyo’s resignation and ouster. By 1 p.m. heavy rains began to pour. But instead of dispersing, the rain-soaked protesters marched through the streets as they headed for the city’s public plaza. As they marched, the protesters chanted slogans while others beat the drums almost burying the rhythmic sounds of rains.

Teresa Apitan, deputy secretary general of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance), told Bulatlat that she was surprised with the turnout. “I didn’t expect the huge participation in this anti-GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) rally because in the past, rains usually lessen the number of rallyers,” Apitan said. “This is proof that people are so discontented that they will bear anything to air their grievances.”

Alejandro Deoma, coordinator of Bayan Muna (BM or people first) Negros, said the rally was much bigger compared to previous ones “despite the fact that, upon the President’s orders, many schools suspended classes and that black propaganda and intrigues that the anti-SONA rally would turn violent had spread a week before.” He said that had the weather been cooperative, their protest action could have been bigger.

Gloria, a fake president

In the rally, Allan Paguia, a law professor from the University of the Philippines, said

“GMA is a fake president, because she stole both her assumption to power in 2001 and the elections in 2004.”

In an earlier briefing with the media, Paguia said Macapagal-Arroyo should be removed because she has “no constitutional and moral mandate to lead our nation.”

“The longer she stays in power, the more our people would suffer from division, violence, lies and violence of the GMA regime,” the lawyer also said.

Asked by reporters what would happen if the President refused to step down as latest events bear out, Paguia said, “Then the people have the sovereign right to unseat GMA by extra-constitutional means, by people power. It is given in our Constitution and in international conventions that if the people believed that their government leaders no longer serve them, the people have all the right to change them by constitutional and extra constitutional means.”

Mayor Ricardo Presbitero of San Enrique town, south of Negros, agreed with Paguia saying, “Now it is clear that GMA will not step down, so the people power is the only way to force her down.” Presbitero is the Negros coordinator for the Partido ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) and a member of NMMR.

Joining in, Stanley Flores, spokesperson of Bangon Pilipinas in Negros, said that “Macapagal-Arroyo should be removed by popular actions if she insisted to stay in power.”

Like a lizard

Meanwhile, in a press statement, Ka Frank Fernandez, spokesperson of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in Negros, described “GMA like a lizard that clinging on to her throne in Malacañang because of her greed for economic and political power.”

Ka Frank said that “GMA is isolated as a result of her own anti-people and anti-democratic laws and policies, and subservience to U.S. imperialism and its running dogs.”

“The entire revolutionary forces unite with and support the people’s call for the ouster of GMA, alongside with the efforts of the revolutionary movement to intensify tactical offensives in the countryside, to weaken the entire reactionary ruling system,” Fernandez added.

Ka Frank also lauded patriotic soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and national police “who have openly or discreetly withdrawn their support for the Arroyo regime, and side with the people’s cause.”

GMA’s SONA useless, diversionary

Meanwhile, rally speakers as well as ordinary folk interviewed by Bulatlat called Macapagal-Arroyo’s SONA as “useless and diversionary.”

Lawyer Rudy Parreno, speaking at the rally, said “the real SONA is in the streets, the ordinary people braving the rains, from their urban poor slums, upland areas, sugar plantations farms, coastal barangays, to pour out their grievances against the corrupt and fake presidency, and demanding immediate reforms.”

Prof. Gil Pellejo of University of St. La Salle, said that the President’s SONA “is packed with lies and contempt against the Filipino people.”

Fr. Bebe Gordoncillo, former Social Action Center Director, said that the SONA which is supposed to report on the real state of our economy and politics, and the performance of the President, was instead used to promote the vested interests of GMA and the politicians who are bent on perpetuating themselves in power” through charter change, constituent assembly (ConAss) and the shift to parliamentary-federal form of government.

“It was not at all a SONA, but another desperate politicking of a deeply-isolated leader out to survive in power,” Gordoncillo said.

Jessie Arcillas, a local laity in a parish in Bacolod, said that “I agree more with the bishops that this is not the time to change government, but for reorientation in the vision and values of our leaders. GMA should be removed, and the government leadership is in need of that reorientation.”

Pedro de Dios, a driver, said in Ilonggo “I couldn’t care less about president’s SONA because whatever she says would mean nothing to my miserable life. Maybe, when people like me are in power, there could be some changes.”

Paz, an economics student in a local university said that hearing the President’s SONA made her feel “disgusted and afraid, especially when GMA said that she will pursue her commitment to globalization, whatever is the political cost.”

“If she stays longer in power, she likely be more worse than Marcos,” the student told Bulatlat.

Anti-GMA alliance

Organized in early June, the NMMR includes, aside from the militant cause-oriented mass organizations, the most active anti-Arroyo opposition groups and alliances, like the workers alliance WALA GMA (Workers Alliance Against Gloria), Youth DARE, Iglesia Filipina Independiente, Bangon Pilipinas, Be Not Afraid Movement,  Partido ng Masang Pilipino, Konsensya ng Bayan, Organization of University of St. La Salle Students and Teachers against GMA (Oust GMA), Alliance of Concerned Teachers, and the Social Science Educators Circle (SEEDCORE), and some individual former and active local government officials.

In Dumaguete, the Negros Oriental Movement to Remove GMA (NO MORE GMA), which spearheaded the big protest action, includes opposition groups in the province as well as the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Negros Oriental, UCCP bishops, clerics and seminarians, the Dumaguete vice mayor, and teachers and supervisors of the Negros Oriental State University. Bulatlat

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