(Pre-recorded message by Ka Crispin Beltran, aired during the People’s SONA on July 24, 2006 )
Five years of hunger, poverty, and persecution.
That has been the US-Arroyo regime’s legacy to the people. Their promises of development have not materialized. At the same time, the government has imposed all sorts of hardships, left and right. Extrajudicial killings, abductions, at various human rights violations have been Mrs. Arroyo’s responses to the people’s resistance. Instead of resolving the economic and social crisis, Gloria is pushing for the imposition of war and Charter Change.
We shall counter this all-out war with all-out protests! Join the SONA protests if you are enraged at poverty and oppression under the dictator Gloria. Be one in advancing change for our nation. Unite to defend our rights, sovereignty, and freedom. Join the struggle for genuine freedom and democracy.
Carry on the fight until victory!
(Cong. Crispin Beltran is confined under police custody at the Philippine Heart Center in Quezon City. Today is the 149th day, or nearly the 5th month of his arbitrary detention by the Arroyo administration. This is his first time since 1986 to have been ‘absent’ from a SONA rally, and the first time since he was elected congressman in 2001 that he will miss the joint plenary session where the President’s SONA is delivered. )
