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A 77-year old Igorot woman wondered aloud why the military was always checking on them as if it had not been informed beforehand of the Cordillera Day commemoration.
“We call for the abrogation of neoliberal policies on education, which have turned even public schools into moneymaking ventures in collusion with the World Bank and other foreign entities.”
"We are very grateful to these three because we're able to defend our land despite Martial Law due to their example and sacrifice.”
There are 2.3 million government employees in the Philippines, and 720,000 are non-regulars or contractual workers under different names, such as job order, emergency-hired, memorandum of agreement (MOA)-hired workers, and contract of services.
Although the global march is united on climate change issues, Feny Cosico of AGHAM explained that in joining that march, it’s also the responsibility of scientists here in the Philippines to show the context of science and technology in this country.
The 145-hectare land that was previously awarded under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in 1996 was successfully turned over by DAR to MARBAI farmers last Dec. 19. However, the farmer-beneficiaries were forcibly driven out of their own land by about 300 security guards of the LFC.
“Water is part of national patrimony. If only a few control the sources of water, you could not drink if they would not allow it.”
In returning for another Lakbayan and camping out in the capital, the Lumad hope to thresh out with the DSWD a workable and acceptable rehabilitation program that would allow them to get back on their feet.
Human rights violations are unrelenting in the countryside.
“Where is the change that you promised?”
“This is a test case for the Duterte administration to bare its resolve in ending contractualization through strong intervention.”
“Where will they get the money for bail? This is further oppression of the poor whose only fault is to fight for the land they have been living on for more than 30 years.”
After four days of intense formal negotiations and an extra day of back-channel talks, the parties firmed up their agreement on free land distribution “as a basic principle of genuine agrarian reform.”
In a formal ceremony presided by the Royal Norwegian Government facilitator Elisabeth Slattum, the parties signed the document entitled Agreement on an Interim Joint Ceasefire they said was a product of three “very difficult” days of negotiations.
At Camp Karingal, the police did not even bother feeding the 57 Apollo residents it ‘arrested.’
Said to be the most contentious issue on the approved agenda in this fourth round of talks, the parties ceasefire committees are discussing the GRP’s bilateral ceasefire proposal it first submitted at the third round of formal talks in Rome, Italy last January and the NDFP’s joint unilateral ceasefire declarations to be bound by a memorandum of understanding.
"They have lived in the streets for nine months, with no relocation or aid, and now that they are reclaiming what is rightfully theirs, they are being treated like criminals?"
With nearly all the negotiators, consultants, advisers and resource persons of both parties wearing traditional barong Tagalog and ternos, the ceremony regained some of the light-heartedness of the previous three rounds seemingly lost in the frantic informal discussions marking the first day of negotiations.
NDFP peace negotiator Benito Tiamzon said both panels have decided to hold the opening ceremony tomorrow at 10 o’clock in the morning (five o’clock in the afternoon, Philippine time)
ACT asserts that CPD is a right and should given as free social service, instead of adding burden to already-cash-strapped professionals, particularly, public schools teachers. The group was apprehensive that the program will be privatized as it was not explicitly stated in the recently-issued IRR that CPD program could be given free.
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