KM salutes student activists for revealing state of nation, exposing Aquino's lies*
Ma. Laya Guerrero
Spokesperson - Kabataang Makabayan
April 19, 2011
Calls on the Filipino youth to ‘Serve the People’ and join the revolutionary movement
As expected, Aquino trumpeted the “Conditional Cash Transfer” and the so-called efforts of his administration to stamp out corruption in government, and claimed these as his major accomplishments in his speech at the University of the Philippines Diliman graduation.
As if having a memory-gap of grand-slashing the social services budget this year, Aquino’s contrived flattery would later on fall flat on his face when UP Student Regent Jacqueline Eroles touted him as summa cum laude in budget-cuts and that the university’s recognizing him with honorary Doctor of Laws is an insult to the Filipino people.
The Kabataang Makabayan applauds UP students and SR Eroles for standing and not failing to remind Aquino, who earlier sat next to her, that the reality in Aquino’s pambobola is this year’s huge budget cuts not only to the premier state university and Philippine General Hospital but to other social services as well. Eroles’ chanting of “Edukasyon, edukasyon, Karapatan ng mamamayan!” (education is a people's right) signaled the standing of other graduates who also raised placards stating "Walang pagbabago sa ilalim ng administrasyong Aquino (Nothing has changed under Aquino)".
KM likewise salutes the brave graduating student of the UP Manila for holding a lightning rally during the graduation rites last week and calling attention to the plight of millions of Filipinos and new graduates who are either ending in the league of unemployed or are forced to migrate as the current government offers no decent employment programs for the people.
Aquino’s speech writer should have been smart enough. You could not delude the Iskolar ng Bayan and the entire people with the debt-funded CCT subterfuge as this is nothing but “dole-out” and breeds more patronage and corruption through to the lowest level of bureaucracy.
By dole-outs and anti-corruption antics, Aquino and his propagandists try to hide the real systemic inequality and root cause of social problems like poverty, hunger, unemployment, land monopoly, and US intervention.
Aquino’s shallow anti-corruption slogans are itself eaten away by his administration’s policies. Despite flagrant corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Aquino approved recently a whopping 11billion peso additional budget for weapons purchase and to appease the demoralized military.
What about the Kamag-anak Inc. who comprise his family and the biggest bourgeois compradors in the country like Danding Cojuancgco benefit? Is it a coincidence that Aquino is now sending the US troops and the AFP in the disputed Hacienda Luisita in the name of Balikatan Exercises to give medical and dental mission or to terrorize the farmers and dissuade them from militant struggle for land reform?
What about all the rhetoric that hinges on change? Aquino administration’s neo-liberal policies that mimic Arroyo’s, unmask his administration as truly allied to its comprador-landlord class and its US imperialist master.
Aside from Aquino’s CCT, Private-Public Partnership as his central economic policy is pushing for greater privatization, deregulation and liberalization of country’s economy. These have immediately resulted to further commercialization of education, diminishing budget to education and social services, sky-rocketing prices of oil products, food and basic necessities, rising transportation costs, attacks on urban poor livelihood and demolitions, wage freeze and anti-worker policies.
Aquino regime remains subservient to the dictates of US imperialism not just with the perpetuation of the Visiting Forces Agreement and implementation of Oplan Bayanihan after the US Counter-insurgency guide. It connives in burdening the people with pro-imperialist K12 education reform plan, and sells out the nation’s natural resources for the plunder and exploitation of multi-national corporations and big extractive companies.
Aquino’s incompetence and anti-people regime drives more youth to be awakened and that will hound Aquino with protests in wherever part of the country he goes in the coming days.
Thus, KM urges the students and youth to hold similar protest actions in your graduation rites and beyond. Being critical, the youth can speak truth by exposing the real issues of the day and the anti-people policies of the US-Aquino regime.
KM urges the youth and students to go to the basic masses, make-use of your energy, talents, skills, or whatever profession and hone them for the benefit and service to the people. The countryside is a vast area where we can learn that only through changing the current system, which breeds exploitation of peasants and workers, will there be a bright future for the Filipino youth and people. Only through genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization can the road of progress and justice be led to the people, and proceed to socialist transformation and construction.
So long as the rotten, corrupt and unjust semi-feudal and semi-colonial system pervades and maintained by US imperialism, the Filipino youth and student will continue to rise in bigger number, and together with the people seek for the revolutionary transformation in our country.
We welcome all progressive and freedom-loving youth to join the ranks of the revolutionary youth under the Kabataang Makabayan and embrace armed struggle of the people.
Filipino youth, go and learn from the basic masses!
Join the New People’s Army!
* Url:http://theprwcblogs.blogspot.com/2011/04/km-salutes-student-activists-for.html
