Press Statement
28 December 2008

For reference: Cynthia Abdon-Tellez
Chairperson
Tel. No.: 97409406

100 women dance against charter change
HK OFW group vows to face chacha “squarely”

Square dancing against charter change is the way Filipino migrants in Hong Kong shall  close 2008 and open the next year with a vow to join the tide of opposition against the  evident desperation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to stay in power by changing the  Constitution.

As 100 women line up at Chater Road and square dance to the anti-chacha song “Maling Akala”, the GMA government should consider itself warned that Filipinos abroad do not stand for changes in the Constitution that shall extend GMA’s term and all her anti-people and anti-migrant policies.

Filipino migrants have every right to oppose charter change for it shall only further intensify the inhuman labor export program of the Philippine government.

With its sellout of the country’s patrimony and resources to foreign capital, there can be no doubt that it will bring more massive displacement of people from their lands, jobs and livelihood. The already more than 10 million Filipinos who have been forced to migrate shall surely increase faster as the people seek ways for their families to survive.

The current global financial crunch has shown the bankruptcy of the US’ neoliberal policies of  liberalization, deregulation and privatization. With the blind adherence, especially of the GMA government, to these policies, the export-oriented and import-dependent economy of the
Philippines shall surely sink deeper into crisis.

Millions more are expected to become jobless by the next year. With widespread poverty,the people will be caught in the vicious labor export program – exported as commodities, squeezed dry by the government and recruitment agencies, neglected, and unprotected.

But aside from the prospect of becoming the only lifeline of the sinking economy, Filipino migrants have so many reasons to not allow for GMA’s extended stay in Malacanang.

With GMA comes corruption in a grand scale wherein the money of OFWs such as that in that OWWA is not spared. She brings with her grave human rights violations, economic plunder, greed for power and war against the people as she scuttles peace negotiations with
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the National Democratic Front (NDF).

She brings her policies for OFWs ridiculously packaged for protection but are, in fact, only burdens for Filipino migrants like the Documentary Stamp Tax, the mandatory psychiatric test, feeding us directly to unscrupulous recruiters by scrapping direct hiring, and the OWWA Omnibus Policies that took away many essential services to Filipinos abroad.

Overseas Filipinos are prepared to meet GMA’s charter change squarely.

It is typical of GMA who never thinks of the welfare of the people first to push her grandiose scheme of staying in power while Filipinos brace themselves for the impending crisis ahead.

The Gabriela Women’s Party vow to rally OFWs in Hong Kong against the hideous charter change schemes of GMA.

GMA does not deserve any extension. On the contrary, she deserves a shortened term through her ouster.#
 

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