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On the escalating armed conflict in Mindanao

Friday, September 12, 2008

Statement of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan

August 26, 2008

 
Responsibility for the escalating armed conflict in Mindanao should be laid squarely on the US-backed Arroyo regime.  Through its self-serving and deceitful maneuvers, the Arroyo regime has severely damaged the peace process, provoked armed confrontation, and allowed escalating foreign intervention in the country’s internal affairs including armed conflicts.
 
The Arroyo regime, with US instigation and support, negotiated in bad faith and raised the expectations of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Moro people, when the GRP negotiators agreed to the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA). The MOA, while recognizing  on paper the  Moro people’s right to self-determination,  in particular their right to their  ancestral domain, was calculated to flounder and fail  in the face of legal challenges and the unfounded outcry that it would dismember the Philippine Republic.
 
The Arroyo regime knew that the MOA would require constitutional changes and that the Supreme Court’s intervention was very likely.  Malacañang took no effort to unify its allies from among the Christian and Moro reactionary political leaders to accept the MOA. It was a calculated risk the regime took given its sinister agenda of neutralizing, if not destroying, the MILF as a revolutionary armed force and thereafter, coopting its leadership.
 
Opportunistically, the Arroyo clique wished to take advantage of the situation that the MOA would precisely entail constitutional revision, in order to open the doors wide open to its bid for term extension via Charter change or Chacha.  However, by raising MILF expectations then backtracking on its commitments, the regime also set the stage for escalating armed conflict. Clashes between the MILF and the AFP ensued after the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on the MOA signing, thereby threatening the fragile ceasefire between the GRP and MILF.
 
On one hand, the MILF must investigate and make accountable its commanders involved in reported attacks on civilians in North Cotobato, Basilan and Lanao. On the other hand, the responsibility of the US-Arroyo regime in the deteriorating situation in Mindanao cannot be overemphasized.
 
The Armed Forces of the Philippines‘ s (AFP) pursuit operations against MILF commanders Umbra Kato and Bravo will merely result in further escalation of the armed conflict. The MILF as a revolutionary force will not surrender its military commanders to the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).  The government’s insistence would only result to more armed confrontation and cause greater damage to civilian lives and property whether Christian, Moro or lumad.
 
The mechanisms embodied in the ceasefire agreement between the MILF and the GRP are the only proper and effective ways to approach the heightened armed confrontation under the present circumstances. The MILF must ensure that those responsible for attacks on civilians will be held accountable and that these attacks will stop.  
 
Nonetheless, government and media reports must not be one-sidedly and uncritically accepted.  The MILF claims that the hostilities in North Cotobato were provoked by AFP troops moving into or in the vicinity of MILF areas even before the MOA initialing.  They distinguish and differentiate the situation and events in North Cotobato from those in Lanao del Sur and Norte.
 
Aside from continued military operations, the Arroyo regime persists in undermining the peace process by Arroyo’s latest pronouncement that “engagements with all armed groups shall be about disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation” and that her regime will pursue peace talks with “communities” instead of armed groups.  From the horse’s mouth, the real agenda of the GRP is thus revealed as well as the real cause of the failure of the earlier GRP-Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) talks and the current prolonged impasse in the GRP-National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) talks.
 
The Arroyo regime shows no real interest in resolving the underlying issues of the armed conflict with the MILF which includes the historic denial of the Bangsamoro’s economic, social and cultural rights, foremost of which is the right to a homeland and self-rule.
The Arroyo government has also undermined national sovereignty by allowing US involvement in the peace process and in the forging of agreements, as well as US involvement in the military operations against the MILF. The Arroyo regime is further exposing itself as a puppet dancing to the tune of US geo-political and economic interests.
The GRP and MILF must immediately return to the negotiating table and resolve the issue of the Bangsamoro ancestral domain on the basis of prior agreements and consensus points.
 
The GRP must abandon its policy of escalating its offensive military operations and of allowing US military and political interventionism. 
It is the GRP’s continuing attempts, with the connivance of the US, to coopt or ensnare the MILF into a negotiated surrender and use the negotiations to remain in power, that has derailed the peace talks and caused the renewed outbreak of hostilities. #

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BAWAL MABUHAY DITO WALANG KATWIRAN NAKAMAMATAY

“Despite dole-outs and subsidies, the government has still failed to help the poor, as shown by a poverty-stricken mother who killed her own children and committed suicide…”

-          Phil. Daily Inquirer, “Ex-Cabinet exec warns vs ‘tipping point’ of poverty”, 10 Sept 2008

 

Last Tuesday, a mother of four in Laguna killed herself and her children because they had not had any earnings for a month. Almost a year ago, a schoolgirl in Mindanao committed suicide because her parents could no longer send her to school. And this month, Mang Pandoy, the slum-dweller from Payatas who was used by the Ramos Administration as its ‘spokesperson against poverty’, died of an easily curable disease.


We should not be surprised with these events. We should be surprised that this does not happen more often. After all, wouldn’t you go crazy if you only had less than 56.87 pesos a day for all your daily gastos, like food, electricity, transportation, etc.? If you think you can’t, then imagine how it’s like for the 68.2 million Filipinos this year who, according to the National Statistics Office, live on less than 56.87 pesos each day.


And it’s not laziness of the poor. Take for example, the Filipino workers: these are the last people you can accuse of laziness. But why do they remain poor? Because their minimum wage today in the NCR is at P381, while the daily cost of living for a single family in the NCR is at P871. It’s just basic math: even if both parents of a household are workers, they wouldn’t be earning enough just to feed their family and pay the rent on their house, and pay the electricity and water bills.


And what about the other expenditures of a family which are not included in the calculation of the daily cost of living? Like education? As of present, according to the Department of Education, 1 out of 6 Filipino children from the age of 6 to 24 years old have stopped going to school. And this is because many parents cannot even afford to send their children to school, even with supposedly “free” education provided by public schools at the elementary and high school level. What more at the college level, where even a school like the University of the Philippines has raised its tuition fee from 300 to 1000 pesos per unit?


As Iskolars ng Bayan, we must not tolerate a society where the poor are driven to commit suicide because of poverty. We must continue the campaigns we have initiated at the start of this semester, including:


1. Approve a P125 across-the-board nationwide wage hike – In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone is entitled to receive wages that are enough for them to lead decent lives. But as mentioned earlier, most of our workers do not even get paid enough for their work to even just feed their families. And workers in the NCR, whose minimum wage amounts to only 37% of what their family needs everyday, are lucky compared to workers in other regions. The worst example is the ARMM, where the minimum wage is at P210, yet their daily cost of living is above P1100. In general, the minimum wage of workers outside the NCR is only 28% of what their family needs every day.


It is definitely not true that a wage hike will cause factories to fire workers, or for them to close due to bankruptcy. According to the Dept. of Labor and Employment, only all the companies that closed under Gloria Arroyo, only 4% cited an increase in the minimum wage as a reason for their closure. Many actually cite increases in operational costs, such as increases in petroleum products, and unfair competition from foreign companies who receive many perks from our Government (such as 10-year tax exemption periods). 


Neither will a wage hike result in the rise of prices of basic goods and commodities. Labor costs are different from what are called fixed costs. Fixed costs, such as the cost of buying raw materials, and renting and fixing equipment used by a company, are directly passed to the consumer by automatically being included in the prices of products. But labor costs are what gives any product its value. Under a capitalist system, what the worker does not get out of his work, goes to the capitalist. So a wage hike will not increase prices, it will only decrease the profit of capitalists.

And in the past four years, the Top 1000 Corporations in the Philippines increased their net income by 327%. Meanwhile, labor costs only compose 6% of all their expenditures.


2. Scrap the Value Added Tax – Just recently, the spokesperson of one of the small oil companies in the Philippines said that the Government should not expect a rollback of petroleum prices of P8 per liter if it does not remove the VAT on oil. This confirms what we have been saying all along: The removal of VAT on oil is the easiest way for the Government to get the oil companies to roll back their prices by a big amount. As for the justification that removing VAT will eventually hurt the poor because it will mean less money for social services, the proposed 2009 national budget says so otherwise.


The proposed budget for health services is P27.8 billion, or amounts to Government spending 83 centavos a day for the health of every Filipino. The proposed budget for education P167.9 billion, translating to 3,076 new classrooms and 19,553 new teaching and non-teaching personnel. This is way short of the 41,905 classrooms needed to be built, and 25,240 new teachers to be hired, just to reduce the nationwide classroom-student ratio to 1:45. Even while UP has a proposed budget of P6 billion, this already amounts to 1/3 of the entire budget of all State Colleges and Universities. How about our brothers and sisters in the 111 other SCUs that will share in the 2/3s of the SCU budget?


On the other hand, 49% of the entire budget, or P681.5 billion, is allocated to foreign debt servicing. Even the Government counter-insurgency program (P34.4 billion) receives more money than any of the following social services: health, housing, and agricultural services. In other words, for every peso the Government robs you through VAT, less than 30 centavos will go back to you in the form of social services. 


Get Involved! There is no time but NOW!

You cannot say that you are too busy with your academics because there are many ways one can participate, even for the most grade-conscious Iskolar ng Bayan. You can start by:


-HELP ANAKBAYAN reproduce and distribute its pins and posters to spread awareness among our fellow students on the need to increase the wages of workers, scrap VAT, and oust GMA. Better yet, create your own designs for pins and posters and we can both distribute them.


- HELP ANAKBAYAN reproduce and distribute this statement. You could drop by our any of our tambayans and ask us for some copies of this statement to give to your friends and classmates. You could even donate any amount you can so we could make more copies.


- IF YOU THINK RALLIES WILL NEVER SOLVE ANYTHING, then you might be on to something. And we’ve known that for a long time. So you can understand too, attend our regular educational discussions every weekday afternoon at CAL 208, AS Lobby, Engineering 3rd Floor Lobby, and the CSWCD SC Office. Or our weekend habits at the Vinzons Hall.


- WEAR A RETRO OUTFIT on Sept. 17, as part of the “Anti-War Festival” where we will remember Martial Law by emulating what was groovy then (like actually resisting an evil dictator like Marcos!)


- JOIN OUR PROTEST ACTION on Sept. 19 to Mendiola and march with our fellow youths from other colleges all over NCR, and even high school students, and young workers and urban poor.


- JOIN OUR PROTEST ACTION on Sept. 22 as the different sectors of society remember Martial Law then, and resolve to fight Martial Law NOW!


- JOIN ANAKBAYAN and have your individual efforts be magnified by collective action. AB is the most comprehensive organization of the Filipino youth with 17,000 members nationwide and in several U.S cities. Its membership comes from the youth of various sectors of our society. Contact Will 09167130067, Rex 09158388927 (for CAL students) Aya 09266186973 (for Engg students), Shai 09154339583 (for CSSP students), Vida 09174656854 (for CSWCD students), Anna 09272520542 (for CHE students), and Ani 09165327054 (for CMC students).

 

anakbayanupdiliman. multiply. com
 
 

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