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The failures of her presidency notwithstanding, Cory Aquino will be remembered for helping restore democracy in the Philippines and dismantle the vestiges of the Marcos dictatorship. When the Arroyo regime increasingly became corrupt and autocratic, she again rose to the challenge. Cory fought tyranny to the very end.
Days before the Sona, thousands of farmers, workers, students and activists braved the heat and the rain as they marched from the provinces of Southern Tagalog to Commonwealth Avenue. The march, called Lakbayan, is their way of fighting the regime’s abuses and asserting their basic rights.
Among other provisions, the CARPER bill mandates that private agricultural lands – the type that the Arroyos and the Cojuangcos own – can only be distributed if the original CARP managed to distribute 90 percent of its target. But CARP, despite the two decades it had, only distributed less than half of it. It’s an impossible provision that only underscores what progressive farmers have been saying all along – that CARPER is bogus.
Audio: KMP's Ramos Denounces Dispersal
A Show of Outrage Vs a Bogus CARPer
Police Disperse Rally Vs CARP, Cha-cha
The landlord-dominated Congress, led by the relatives of President Arroyo, voted Wednesday night to add five more years to the implementation of a 20-year-old agrarian-reform program that has failed to uplift the lives of peasants and farmers in the Philippines. And critics say the new proposed law is even worse than the original.
They did not die in vain. The families and co-workers of the Hacienda Luisita martyrs said that in spite of the tragedy, they are slowly benefiting from what their kin and comrades gave their lives for.
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