The Inquirer today reported that the Philippine government is open to sending another batch of “humanitarian mission” to Iraq. Such a new batch of Filipino troops would be under the United Nations framework, foreign secretary Delia Albert reportedly said.
Before the US-led invasion of Iraq, President Arroyo kept on paying lip service to the UN. In the end however, she joined the so-called “coalition of the willing,” which went to war in Iraq without UN sanction.
Carlos Conde, moderator of PinoyPress, just sent an e-mail alert on the reported shooting of another journalist in General Santos City.
He wrote that Jonathan “Jun” Abayon, 27, a reporter of RGMA Superadyo in that city, is in critical condition after he was shot in the head early this morning, allegedly by a bodyguard of Filipino world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao.
As the proposed 2-child policy heats up debates in the House of Representatives, health centers, which provide free training for family planning, are now threatened to lose their free and low-priced contraceptives. These contraceptives are being donated by international groups who out of their good will and advocacy provide us with free condoms. But without the government’s clear support on the family planning program, couples without means may have to content themselves with the calendar method or the more popular yet incorrect “withdrawal method.”
The National Statistics Office (NSO) projects our population to 82.7M this year. Filipinos are being sexually active at a younger age but the government seems to be blinded by the fact, tied down by the conservative faction more popularly known as the Catholic Church and several ignoramuses who still believe that sex is done only within the constraints of marriage.
“Two journalists slain in five days; four killed in 2004,” the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines reports in a statement.
Last Saturday, Roger Mariano, a DZJC-Akyson radio anchor in Laoag was shot dead while on his way home. Yesterday, Arnel Manalo, Batangas correspondent of Bulgar tabloid and the radio station DZRH, suffered the same fate.
“The one factor visibly missing in the Philippines is public indignation widespread and compelling enough to make it politically advantageous for the Philippine government to rigorously go after the killers,” writes Philippine Journalism Review editor Luis Teodoro.
The governments of United States and Australia, among other countries, have been criticizing the Philippines for pulling out its troops in Iraq to save Angelo de la Cruz.
The Filipino Youth for Peace issued this open letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard in response to his government’s verbal attacks against us. The group said:
Mr. Howard, you accuse the Filipino people of weakness for the way they responded to the hostage crisis. May we take the liberty to tell you that it is those who see no course for themselves other than to unflinchingly hug the tails of imperial mass murderers who are the real weaklings. It is they who, above all, risk the lives of their countrymen for a war that is not worth the life of even a louse, much less that of an innocent human being.
You need not look to the Philippines to find weakness, Mr. Howard. You need only look in the mirror.
An Iraqi group threatens to kill Filipino hostage if the Philippines would not withdraw its troops from Iraq within 72 hours.
It would not happen if only the government listened to an earlier call by cause-oriented groups.
Among the things one would notice in President Arroyo’s 2004 inaugural address was that she no longer refered to the need for new politics as she did in January 2001 at the EDSA Shrine.
In 2001, she said:
Politics and political power as traditionally practiced and used in the Philippines are among the roots of the social and economic inequities that characterize our national problems. Thus, to achieve true reforms, we need to outgrow our traditional brand of politics based on patronage and personality. Traditional politics is the politics of the status quo. It is a structural part of the problem.
We need to promote a new politics of true party programs and platforms, of an institutional process of dialogue with our citizenry. This new politics is the politics of genuine reform. It is a structural part of the solution.
It was the best thing to say at that time.