A government workers union said Duterte’s executive order directing the full devolution of certain government functions is silent over thousands of contractual workers who are most likely to be laid-off when this order is implemented.
Photo by Clemente Bautista
Health experts and lawmakers are alarmed over the Philippine government’s deafening silence on moves of several countries to press for the waiver of TRIPS on medicines, particularly on COVID-19 vaccines.
In sharp contrast to the biblical times, lives lost today were unholy sacrifices to the altar of greed, corruption (abuse of power), and injustices. These aren’t celebrated, but mourned. These aren’t lifted up to the skies, but buried with the heaviest burdens in our hearts.
It validates the enduring legacy of our anti-colonial heroes who sought to unite the nation by waging a war for independence.
Vicente Ladlad’s wife, Fides said that his accounts are not from the money laundering or terrorism financing but resulted from Republic Act No. 10368 or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013.
That unity, however is not enough. The Nobel Prize laureate Albert Camus noted in his The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, that the man or woman opposed to the evils of the times — the individual who says “no” to “the ignorance that claims for itself the right to kill” — at the same time also implicitly says “yes” to certain values.
It shows an utter lack of rigor in the exercise of his duties as commander-in-chief, for instance, to vet intelligence information. It also indicates how lightly, if at all, he regards his oath of office to “faithfully and conscientiously fulfill my duties as President of the Philippines, preserve and defend its Constitution, execute its laws, do justice to every man and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation.”
“This award also comes at a crucial time, against the backdrop of a rapidly deteriorating human rights crisis and alarming democratic backsliding in the Philippines, and this award is a recognition of the tremendous challenges we currently face amid worsening attacks on human rights defenders, police brutality, militarization, and the narrowing of civic and democratic spaces in the country.”
Amid apparent attempts of the present administration to perpetuate itself beyond the next national elections, a broad coalition of progressives, religious, and cultural workers to name a few, say no to another Duterte.
If you’re alive and you know it, say: “Meow.” By DEE AYROSO