InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA, Philippines -- The spokesman of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao said President Benigno Aquino III’s third State of the Nation Address held almost nothing for the Filipino people but was, indeed, a report to his real bosses -- the “imperialists and the ruling class.”
“His report pictured the situation of the nation according to the view of his real bosses, charting the country’s direction in the next three years in consonance with the greedy interests of the imperialists, big bourgeois compradors, big landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists,” Jorge Madlos, or Ka Oris, said in a statement.
Aquino called his SONA, delivered Monday, “Report Kay Boss.”
Oris said the SONA “glossed over the suffering of the broadest number of people, and portends of marked more hardship in the years to come.”
In the SONA, Aquino spoke of reforms in health, social services, education, employment and the economy. He also vowed to fully implement land reform within his term.
But Madlos said the conditional cash transfer program for 3.1 million poor families is nothing but “alms.”
”Money pumped out without its equivalent value in the production of goods results no less in its devaluation and a decrease in its capacity to purchase. Such a program is a grave affront against the people because instead of providing them with land to till and quality employment they can truly rely on, they are now simply being treated as mendicants. Both the corrupt in Aquino’s government as well as politicians who are eyeing for positions in next year’s elections are the ones who really benefit … ” he said.
Madlos also said Aquino “failed or intentionally avoided talking about the most basic pillars of the nation’s economy, which are land reform and the establishment of national industrialization.
“In spite of its length, clocking at an hour and 28 minutes, he devoted only a single line regarding land reform, virtually evading the issue of distributing Hacienda Luisita. He intended to avoid having to elaborate on the very cause of impoverishment of the class that comprise the majority of Filipinos, the peasantry,” Madlos said.
“He could not have spoken about it with much integrity because of the Aquino administration’s continued refusal to implement genuine agrarian reform, and because of the rapid monopolization of land by plantations owned by the imperialists, big comprador bourgeois and big landlords, especially in Mindanao,” he added.
Madlos also criticized Aquino for not telling the country about the real condition of the workers.
“His much lengthier discourse hid the suffering of the second most populous class in the country, the workers, by way of showing statistics indicating that there was perceivable although slight decrease in the unemployment, completely evading, however in articulating the real cause of workers’ miseries, which is the utter lack of genuine national industrialization in the country,” he said.
“He devoted so much time praising and entertaining us with the benefits of buko (coconust) juice while trying to enshroud the truth that the country chiefly remains a producer of raw materials and, at the same time, an importer of finished products, which generally only favor imperialist capital and profit-making, like the mines and plantations in Mindanao. The absence of basic industries in the country deprives it of real development and hinders the full mobilization of the growing worker populace,” he added.
Madlos also pointed out that the SONA was clear on government’s economic direction: heavy reliance on foreign capital and borrowing as he scoffed at Aquino’s notes on tourism.
“Tourism has been made into one of the pillars of the economy suited to entertain the influx of foreign tourists, half of whom, if we have to take the words of US Ambassador Harry K. Thomas, seek, among others, sexual gratification in the country,” Madlos said.
The SONA, Madlos also said, showed the low regard of Aquino for human rights.
“While he boasted of having neutralized the Dominguez criminal group, PNoy was silent on his government’s continuing failure to punish the butchers Palparan, Ecleo, the Ampatuans, and the killers of Fr. Pops Tentorio, Margarito J. Cabal, Jimmy Liguyon and other victim s of extra-judicial killings. He made no mention of the peace talks to conceal his regime’s fascism. Clearly, the US-Aquino regime holds human rights in low regard, as it continues to dismiss the breadth of issues in the peace talks that need to be immediately addressed,” he said.
OTHER NATIONAL STORIES
As mayor longs for development in Kalayaan, others fear China's 'rape' of the islands
Willie Revillame says âWowowillieâ to end when his TV5 contract expires in October
