(photo credit: danrogayan.wordpress.com)
When my government makes policies that create a richer, smaller elite, I must now be suspicious of the candidates it pushes, the legislation it creates and the manner by which it executes the laws.
A government whose obvious bias is for the rich cannot be trusted to keep the interests of the majority of its people in mind nor can it be relied on to protect the weakest members of society.
The time has come to seriously start questioning an administration voted into office on promises of justice, but which has failed at every turn.
It is an administration that has consistently shown us that they expect exceptions for itself and for its members but lowers the boom on “others.”
So we have a Justice Secretary who believes that she can disobey orders from the Supreme Court, foreign policy advisers who think nothing of telling the President to waive away territory defined in the constitution, a peace panel that speaks only to the most atrocious of insurgents and ignores the peaceful lumads, a mining law that gives a pittance to the katutubo and the local governments yet ravages the land.
We have a historical commission that ignores its mandate to stop the destruction of heritage. And in the middle of all that, real victims are left behind to seek justice slow and painful step by slow and painful step.
We have an administration that is long on blaming the previous administration but has grossly tossed aside the heroes that exposed the Arroyo sins. Jun Lozada is on trial for graft.
AFP Officers given amnesty and promised their separation pay, languish in poverty while waiting for its release.
But Mar Roxas who stood by Gloria Arroyo, ran in her party and benefitted from it is perhaps the second most powerful person in the land, getting his pick of positions to fill with his friends and associates.
Kiko Pangilinan has been promised a Cabinet position when – and how can we forget this – it was his act of simply “noting” contested returns that gave Arroyo her patina of legitimacy.
And let’s not forget, Atong Ang is back!
How can one not feel the rage? How can one not feel the depression? It is so out in the open that the rich get not just richer, but insanely, outrageously richer with less and less obligations to help the less fortunate.
And with said riches go with it the benefits of exemptions – from taxation, from oppression, from accountability. How can one not feel the contempt for the hypocrisy that says “remember martial law” yet refuses to push for the conviction of Imelda Marcos and Ferdinand’s minions.
How can an administration brought to power on the sentiment of a man killed by the dictatorship push for the removal of the PCGG without any significant record of a conviction?
Yet death is always present. Dexter Condez of the Atis died protecting a small bit of land – just a fraction really of what his community really and truly owns.
But it is symbolic of a government that prefers the filthy lucre brought by a hotel chain with blood on its hands.
It lies within its power to bring justice to the Atis, to give them back their land – but the interests of the few rich are too powerful, their voices drown out the weakest members of our society. And we cannot even weep.
(Source : PSSST! Centro)
To know more about Trixie Cruz Angeles, check out: I AM TRIXIE CRUZ
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