“If we don’t spend enough, ordinary citizens would continue to suffer…If we don’t reverse the business closures, how could we generate jobs? The government would then have to provide aid, which is obviously not sustainable.” — Marikina 2nd District Rep. Stella Quimbo
Opposition legislators were quick to spot this brazen attempt to revive the pork barrel system, as the NTF-ELCAC is set to receive a 2,969 percent increase in its budget – from P622.3 million in 2020 to a whopping P19.1 billion in 2021.
“We cannot accept the Court’s reasoning that it is barred from compelling the executive to protect the people’s right to health ‘in a certain way or to a certain degree’ and ‘no matter how dire the emergency’ when it is obvious that the current response is a huge failure and places our people’s health and safety in peril.”
In short, we face a simple choice: Internationalism or Extinction. Either we form a common front of workers and peoples that can reclaim the world from this tiny set of oligarchs and dictators. Or they will continue to amass wealth and power, watching the world burn outside their window.
With the pandemic still raging on, the crisis in the Philippine educational system has been further exposed. Instead of addressing the concerns of the education sector, the Duterte administration has chosen to neglect it even more by not providing enough budget for distance learning.
The learning modalities recommended by the education department are not suitable to students with special needs.
“We must always remember, that the nobility of every profession comes, not with the title that is prefixed in our names, but in how we use it to serve those who have less, those who have nothing, those who have to suffer every ounce of injustice and indignity.”