PRESS RELEASE
June 14, 2010
The League of Filipino Students launched today their ‘Four-Point Criteria for Youth Appointees in the Aquino Government’ in front of the Aquino residence in Times St., Quezon City.
In the statement released to the media, the four-point criteria of the militant student organization stated that any prospective youth appointee of President-elect Noynoy Aquino must possess the following qualifications –
1. clear pro-student and pro-youth positions such as tuition moratorium and regulation, greater state subsidy to education in all levels (i.e. education spending at around six percent of GDP), employment, among others
2. clear pro-people positions such as genuine agrarian reform, increase of wages, salaries and benefits for working people
3. unflinching resolve to hold accountable Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her cohorts for corruption, human rights violations, sell-out of national sovereignty and other anti-people policies
4. proven track record of leadership of the youth and students, and unity with the people’s struggles
“Any youth appointee by the Aquino administration must possess these qualities in order to ensure that such appointment is no mere lip service by President-elect Aquino on the importance of the youth and their issues.” This was the statement of Terry Ridon, National Chairperson of the League of Filipino Students.
Ridon indicated that the youth and students had been marginalized under the Mrs. Arroyo, not only in terms of representation in government, but also due to neglect of many of their issues.
He said that one particular issue was the Arroyo government’s failure to address accessibility to higher education by regulating skyrocketing tuition increases.
“In the last nine years of Mrs. Arroyo, the amount of tuition being paid in colleges and universities, had almost doubled by around 94-percent,” Ridon said, citing a new study by the National Union of Students of the Philippines which compared tuition data from the Commission on Higher Education from 2001-2009.
Ridon said that Mr. Aquino must heed their four-point criteria for his youth appointees with much consideration, in order to most ably respond to the numerous problems faced by the youth and students.
“If he fails to consider these, he might end up faltering and failing as Mrs. Arroyo did with education in the last nine years.”
Reference:
Terry Ridon
National Chairperson, League of Filipino Students
