"Tolerating Arroyo and an Underdog of Wall Street"
"Our Nation is still a servant of American imperialism. The Liberal Party government...is only a puppet of Wall Street."
These are the words pioneer labour leader Mariano Balgos said to the members of Congress of Labour Organizations before going to the underground. These words also mirror the still current tendency being bannered nowadays by the present Liberal Party rule under the person of President Benigno Aquino III.
And as expected, the administration itself, whilst bannering its so-called "progressive programme" uplifting the people and traversing the straight path (daang matuwid), it remained dependent to the wishes of foreign interest, particularly those from the United States if not from China. It somehow become common for us to see how men like Aquino, Roxas, Arroyo be dependent to U.S. wishes regardless of its risks putting the country into trouble.
How wonder why despite the rhetorics, the reforms, the "Pantawid Pasada", the infrastructure, and the rehashes of programs from past administrations all failed to ease the gap between the rich and the poor and instead widening it. Worse, despite bearing anti-Arroyo sentiment, the former President haven't faced arrest, trial nor imprisonment due to her crimes being done against the people-or as other commentators think of: having no bite to Aquino's anti-Arroyo bark.
Speaking of Aquino's toleration of Arroyo's policies, he is still pursuing the same line of import and trade liberalization, privatization of remaining state assets, export of cheap labor, automatic debt appropriations, reliance on foreign debt and investments and call-center-centric progress, or even plunder and corruption from certain officials, and extrajudicial killings as well as several thousand cases of human rights violations.
Weird isn't it for a leader who tolerates past policies regardless of bannering a sentiment called "Change." Yes, there are few changes aside from the face to personalities from Malacanang to Batasang Pambansa, but still does it affect millions of people around the Philippines, especially Metro Manila? The farmers of Hacienda Luisita still cries for land, the workers call for job recall and a just increase in wages, the students from Diliman to the University Belt in Manila chanted Increase for State Subsidies in SUCs and Tuition Moratoriums in Private schools. Yet still the administration, being a vicar of the system remained aloof to the wishes of the people.
I can't explain further more but to sum it all the people are rather creating a road countering what Aquino dubbed as "Daang Matuwid" (straight path), after all it is still "Paliku-liko", "Baku-bako" or still "Under Construction that is likely to be left unfinished. This coming SONA, the administration will still continue its dependency on the wishes coming from Wall Street to the White House that makes our patriots rolling from their graves.
