Piercing Pens

The chair of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) in Bulacan was killed the other night. This brought the number of political killings this year to 26, based on Karapatan’s tally.

Santiago “Ka Santi” Teodoro, chair of Bayan’s Bulacan chapter, was driving a car when unidentified assailants shot him. His wife, who was with him at that time, survived the attack. His comrades condemned the attack.

The killing occured even as left-leaning party-list representatives are being accused of participating in a plot to bring down the Arroyo government. Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran remains detained at a police hospital while his four colleagues are under the House of Representatives’ protective custody as the police threatens to arrest them.

According to Karapatan, in Central Luzon alone, 12 activists were killed this year. The number of political killings since 2001 could be as high as 6000, the human rights group said.

(A Press Release from the Concerned Artists of the Philippines)

GMA’s pronouncement that she is God’s plan for the country is an affront to God’s being. He or She should sue for libel.

As many would already know, this technique is not new as it was used by our Spanish colonizers. They grabbed the natives’ lands, made them their slaves, captured, torture and/or killed those who resisted, and claimed that all that was happening was the will of God. They tried to console the turmoil in the grieving souls of our forebears by preaching that there will anyway be a final judgment day –only, it is in the afterlife.

History tells us that not everyone bit that propaganda. The Katipuneros and their supporters knew that a large part of salvation had to come from actions by the people themselves. They resisted and trounced the God-quoting Spanish colonizers. But, only to be betrayed by the Americans, whose cause for aggression was, as claimed by then U.S. Pres. Mckinley, a signal from God (through his dream).

Among the traditional political parties in the Philippines, it is Liberal Party that I admire the most. Its leaders–and many of its members–are less trapo than the other traditional politicians from other parties (especially Lakas).

Mention Liberal Party and these honorable names would come to mind: Ninoy Aquino, Jovito Salonga, Evelio Javier, Bobby Tañada, Franklin Drilon, and Grace Padaca, among others. LP members, along with the national democratic movement, fought the Marcos dictatorship. In 1991, its senators led the successful anti-US bases campain in the Senate.

LP is different from all other traditional parties because its existence does not depend on personalities. Like the progressive party-list groups we now have in Congress, LP has an ideology.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo just lifted the State of Emergency that she declared last week.

Statement of Secretary Ignacio R. Bunye On Proclamation 1017
from Gov.ph

There is a crackdown on anarchy and disorder, not on freedoms.

Proclamation 1017 is not a tool for oppression but a shield of the state and the people against mob rule and the seditious use of the tools for public information to foment civil unrest.

The President commends the PNP and the Prosecutor’s Office for the speedy filing of criminal charges against those who tried but failed to bring down the government.

If the plotters had succeeded, the country could have been in flames by now as the factions of the extreme left, the misguided elements of the military and the political opportunists fight among themselves for supremacy.

With their setback, the plotters also failed to derail our economic gains.

Confidence in the economy remains high and this is a tribute to the decisive actions taken by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to restore political stability.

The perceived restiveness within the ranks of the military is abating and the chain of command is secure as ever.

As the crackdown on government critics continue with the filing of cases against more than 50 “communists” and the arrest of another activist lawmaker–Bayan Muna Rep. Joel Virador–the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication issued a statement calling on President Arroyo to “end the assault on press freedom and the media and immediately rescind Proclamation No. 1017.”

Below is the complete text of the statement from the website of UP CMC Prof. Danilo Arao:

From Bayan Muna website:

February 27th, 2006

Bayan Muna swiftly condemned the arrest today of one of its partylist representatives at the Davao City airport.

The human rights advocate-turned-legislator Joel G. Virador was to rebook his plane ticket to Manila at the PAL office at around 2:00-2:30 pm when he was approached by elements of the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.