By Rose Palacio
Department of Labor and Employment XI regional director Ponciano Ligutom announced that the Jobs Fair is slated today Saturday (April 28) at Gaisano Mall, Davao City to end until May 1, Labor Day.
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The system of embassies and consular offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) collects millions of dollars from overseas Filipino workers in the form of passport fees, taxes and other levies on the “disposable” population of the Philippines, a population which is now the mainstay of Filipino economy. With some $19 billion in remittances from Filipinas and Filipinos who work relentlessly, often under intolerable conditions and in unbearable alienation from home, family and community, one would expect the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) to be most energetic in ensuring that overseas Filipinos are empowered and enabled to participate in the electoral process, that they are provided with the means to have a voice in the choice of Philippine political leadership. Were wealth and resources truly the determinants for influence in Philippine politics ? which is the usual explanation for the enormous influence of landlords, warlords, bosses and corporations ? then, logically, overseas Filipinos would have a significant presence in electoral politics.
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Statement on the May 2007 Elections
The May 2007 elections is a crucial event in our country. It is held at a time of intensifying economic, political, cultural and spiritual crises. It comes at a time when there are more than 800 victims of extrajudicial killings and other forms of human rights violations happening in our midst. It also takes place at a time when serious questions about the legitimacy of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?s rule still hound her.
MANILA — ?It?s double standard and there?s no other way to call it.?
This was according to GABRIELA Secretary General Emmi De Jesus who accosted the Macapagal-Arroyo administration for its quick responses when it comes to complaints and requests from US citizens yet plays blind and deaf to the murder and rape of its own people.
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MANILA — The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is grossly deceptive in its latest scheme to hold so-called awareness drive to justify continuing military presence in urban communities during the elections. Instead of rounding up urban poor communities and universities to lecture against cause-oriented groups, the AFP should focus awareness drive on human rights among its ranks. This election season, they should all go back to the barracks and take a study leave on human rights. We don’t need them dictating upon the people the AFP’s choice of candidates in the guise of ‘awareness drive’ which actually consists of lectures against activist groups as what they did at the Philippine Normal University, Philippine Christian University and other schools and communities. We join the various groups in demanding immediate and total pull-out of AFP troops who will likely repeat the scenario of active military role in the fraudulent 2004 elections.
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