Morally bankrupt gov’t must not change Charter say Franciscans

MANILA, December 13, 2008—Morally bankrupt President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her administration must not change the country’s Constitution at this point of time, said Filipino Franciscans priests.

Filipino Franciscans have rejected any attempt to revise or amend the 1987 Constitution of the country at this time, said Fr RJ Abada, OFM.

“The Order of Friars Minor -Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (OFM-JPIC) Office of the Franciscan Province of San Pedro Bautista, as a fruit of our prayer, discernment, and solidarity with the people, strongly rejects any attempt to revise or amend the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines at this time,” said Abada in a statement sent to CBCPNews.

“We believe that the President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration has failed to show that it holds the people's interest above self-interest. It has failed to resolve issues such as the ‘fertilizer fund corruption scandal,’ ‘the Hello Garci election fraud scandal,’ and the ‘NBN-ZTE bribery scandal.’ It has promoted anti-people policies such as the Mining Revitalization Program of the Philippines and the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA). It has failed to genuinely implement agrarian reform,” he said.

He further said, “We refuse to entrust the Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines to a morally bankrupt administration. In the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, protector of the poor, we join our voices with those of all Filipinos of good will to reject Charter Change.” (Santosh Digal)
 

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Unresolved scandals spark doubts on Cha-cha motives

MANILA, December 13, 2008— Amending the Constitution would not have been a problem for its proponents if only key issues hounding the present administration have been resolved.

The Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) said the numerous unresolved scandals involving the Arroyo government are the ones that triggered doubts on Charter change.

Sr Estrella Castalone, ARMSP executive secretary, said if only President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shed light on issues encompassing her administration it may have been different.

The Arroyo regime has lost its credibility to govern and lead the nation, she said during an interfaith rally against Charter change in Makati City Friday.

“There are many issues until this time that have never been answered by this government. There are so many things which this administration is answerable to the country,” Castalone said.

The religious leader demanded that the Arroyo regime shed light on various scandals all related to fraud during the 2004 elections such as the “Hello, Garci” tapes and the hundreds of millions of pesos plundered from “fertilizer scam.”

She said the government should also open up long standing cases of alleged graft and corruption like the Macapagal Highway scam, the North and South Rail deals, the NBN-ZTE deal and convict the culprits.

Castalone said the Catholic Church has been calling for radical change in the country. And the government has the first obligation to heed that call, she said.

She said that to spell out the radical change in concrete terms also include the stoppage of all extrajudicial killings and bring to justice all those involved.

“What the country needs right now is not Charter change but to address the pressing issue facing our people,” Castalone said.

Thousands of protesters rallied at the junction of Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas against moves by administration lawmakers to revise the constitution to allow her to stay in power beyond 2010.

Police said around 8,000 religious leaders, students, activists, opposition politicians on the City’s business district.

Catholic priest Fr Joe Dizon, one of the organizers of the interfaith rally, cautioned of a major uprising if Mrs Arroyo does not order a stop administration moves to changer the Charter.

He called on the Charter change proponents to follow the call of the Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales to “stop the foolishness” of amending the Charter in haste.

Dizon said there are more urgent things that the government should attend to. (Roy Lagarde)
 

MANILA TIMES

Thursday, December 11, 2008

When it comes to

 When it comes to the Philippine House of Representatives, it seems that everything can be resolved by a question of numbers. When the opposition and people's organizations attempted several times to file impeachment cases against the President, the issue was eventually voted upon and—as expected—decided on by the numerically- superior groups within the House of Representatives.

Again, with the talk of Charter change on everyone's lips, its proponents at the House seem to be sure of getting the required signatures from members of both the House and the Senate to satisfy the Constitutional requirement of a three-fourths majority for a Constituent Assembly. Being able to mobilize representatives at the House to cast their votes in their numbers, it seems that for some quarters, this three-fourths requirement is nominally easy to achieve by making the Senate and the House vote as a single body. Surely the more numerous would win the vote—it's just a matter of numbers.

Proportion

Let us use a common mathematical idea—proportion— to check the soundness of this proposal.

Representatives at the House are elected by congressional district, or nationwide by a choice of party in the case of party-list representatives. Senators are also are chosen nationwide with the top twelve in the election replacing half of the Senate during each poll.

Using the idea of proportional representation in our legislative bodies, the proportion of the collective mandate would be different for each member of the two chambers. It is therefore not a straightforward proposition to simply mix together the members of the House and the Senate and to have them vote jointly to sit as a Constitutional Assembly.

The problem at hand is like counting coins. One does not count the number of individual coins to obtain their total worth; we do this by adding the associated value attached to each coin. Having fifty 1-peso coins is surely more numerous than having five 10 peso coins, but they both add up to the same amount. One would have to deal with each denomination separately.

Even if the question of this manner of voting reaches the Supreme Court, some quarters seem to be also sure of the number of friendly ears sitting in the Court. Yet even those opposed to the moves to Charter change are trying to show their strength by showing (or announcing) their numbers. Various Church groups, including the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines and some Protestant denominations, together with civil society groups have vowed to launch protests against the move. They do reflect the collective sense of the people as measured by the various surveys showing that around 77 percent of those aware of Charter change initiatives are not in favor of these moves.

Numbers abound in the issue of Charter change. There are debates on the number of chambers in our legislature: whether to convene a unitary form of government with a parliament, or retain the dual houses our lawmakers have now. Even in the contentious issue of term extensions, the debate rages on how many years will current officials are allowed to stay before new elections are held. Even the phrase "No-El" reflects the numerical sense of having zero elections come 2010.

While there may be debates on the form of government and term extensions, Charter change advocates all agree on provisions for economic liberalization. In the Con-Com reports and the proposals being floated in the House, foreign corporations will be allowed to own industrial, commercial and residential land. They will also be allowed to lease public lands for a period specified by Congress. The proponents of Charter change are banking on liberalization as the means to attract more foreign investments and drive economic growth.

Even here, numbers should also bear us out. During the period of increased foreign investments in the country, our economic growth has remained low as these firms also repatriate most of their profits to their mother companies. The proposed provisions for liberalization will aggravate landlessness in the countryside, foreign mining for export and the continued exploitation of our natural resources.

Narrow cardinal counting

Changing the Constitution should be really about numbers: but not the narrow cardinal counting proposed by some in Congress nor the number of term extensions or how many hectares can a foreigner own. The actions on Cha-cha should be reflective of the number of people that will be affected by these major changes in policies.

Some sectors have also noted that with the current economic crisis, we should instead focus our collective sense in trying to strengthen our own economy rather than being embroiled in a numbers game with our Constitution. Increasing hardships, our worsening economy and poverty—these are the numbers that should really count.

Dr. Tapang is a physicist and the chairperson of AGHAM.
Prom.bound@gmail. com

KASAMA-TK
Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan
PRESS RELEASE REFERENCE: Imelda Lacandazo
October 21, 2008 Spokesperson, KASAMA-TK
09182995780

MILITANT SOUTHERN TAGALOG FARMERS SAY
ARROYO A PEST LIKE "GOLDEN KUHOL"

Around 600 farmers and other sectors from Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon today held a protest action and presented testimonies attesting to the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program to address their landlessness. Led by Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK), the farmers burned an effigy depicting Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as a giant golden kuhol, a pest to farmers, especially in rice lands.

The farmers held a vigil at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños yesterday. They went around communities in Los Baños and Calamba before converging at Crossing, Calamba City to culminate the week-long protest of the farmers in commemoration of peasant week. Protest camps were put up by farmers since October 12 in various key cities and towns in the region in a symbolic farm strike to highlight their call for against hunger, poverty, landlessness, militarization and globalization. During the week, the farmers also held symbolic padlocking of Provincial Agrarian Reform Offices and picketed NFA offices in the region.

The farmers said the numerous documented cases of cancelled certificate of land ownership awards distributed through CARP are evidence of the program's insincerity to address the land problem; thus, the only real and lasting solution to the land problem is the enactment of House Bill 3059 (Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill). Imelda Lacandazo, spokesperson of KASAMA-TK, said that in the 20 years that CARP was implemented, land ownership continues to be monopolized by a few landlords in the region. She said their research shows that seven out of ten farmers are landless. "In Batangas, for example, around 71,813 hectares are controlled by 91 big landlords while in Quezon, 211 landlords own 561,626 hectares of land."

The government's CARP needs to be tackled by Congress before the year ends because it was only temporarily extended through a House resolution after the program lapsed this June. A consolidated Senate bill, Senate Bill 2666, has already been filed seeking to extend CARP for ten years with a P147 billion fund.

"The P147 billion fund will only be another source of corruption and will only benefit corrupt officials, not farmers," Lacandazo said. She added that they also hope to underscore their opposition to globalization which maintains the "backward and import dependent-export oriented agricultural system in the country that keeps us impoverished." "The rice crisis exposed how defenseless we are to movements in the global market because of this. Only by advancing and attaining national democracy can we cut the ties that bind us to poverty because this contains a genuine land reform and national industrialization program. Only then can the lives of the toiling masses be uplifted."

She hit the Arroyo government for its 'criminalization' of political acts as exemplified by the escalating number of cases filed against legal members and leaders of progressive peasant groups. Among the prominent cases are the Mamburao 7, the arrest and detention of peasant organizers in Cavite, known as the Tagaytay 5, and the recently filed case of arson and conspiracy to commit rebellion against 27 activists which again includes several peasant organizers. She said that farmers are threatened and harassed in the countryside, especially in areas where there are on-going land disputes.

"Instead of giving us land, we are given militarization and violence in an effort to quell our protests. But we will not be cowed because if we do not continue fighting for land because land is the very foundation of our lives," Lacandazo added.###

For more information, please contact Glen - 09083115293.

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Speakers were given only a few minutes to vent their rage against Cha-cha. Then the Time is Up placard goes up, accompanied by a cha-cha tune.

Ayala has these plants whose color  matched the color of the shirts of many of  the rallyists