In a perfect world, Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan never would have met. The atrocity that befell them, a most horrendous fate, never would have happened. And they never would have stood now as a testament to the rot that is eating away at the core of this country.
Tens of thousands of civilian contract workers from poverty-stricken countries -- among them Filipino Rey Torres (left) -- were hired to support the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. In case of injury or death, they are supposed to be covered by workers' compensation insurance financed by American taxpayers. But the program has failed to deliver medical care and other benefits.
Triumph, one of the world’s largest underwear makers, has been re-exporting its raw materials from the Philippines to other countries where labor cost is lower. Its workers are understandably worried. Worse, they have reason to believe that the company may end up becoming a runaway shop.
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.
Steep increases in fines and penalties, imposed by the Arroyo regime to make up for its chronic revenue shortfalls, are hitting jeepney drivers particularly hard. As if that were not enough, buwayas (crododiles) masquerading as traffic enforcers in colorful uniforms lurk in the streets, waiting to pounce on them at every turn.
A law passed last year to bring down the prices of drugs and medicines has not delivered on its promise, according to consumer and health advocates. It failed to break the stranglehold of huge transnational drug companies on the Philippine market. It also squandered an opportunity to develop the local pharmaceutical industry.
Has the Visiting Forces Agreement served its avowed purpose? Or has it only reinforced the unequal alliance between the Philippines and the United States, a relationship so tilted in the Americans’ favor that to call the VFA an agreement -- with all the word’s connotation of equal rights, benefits and privileges -- would be a travesty?
In Honor of Human-Rights Defenders
'Vanessa' Narrates How American Raped Her
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