Sleepless miner recounts seeing friends buried alive
By Nestor P. Burgos“Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing my friends and fellow workers who died,” recounted Rodrigo (not his real name), who said that he had not slept for the past two days.
“Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing my friends and fellow workers who died,” recounted Rodrigo (not his real name), who said that he had not slept for the past two days.
The return of P56.5 billion coconut levy fund to the government from the redemption of the 24 percent San Miguel Corp shares was only a partial victory for the country’s coconut peasants, a lawyer for several coconut farmers group said Monday.
Disappointed with President Benigno Aquino III’s continued silence on coco levy issue despite the recent Supreme Court final ruling that the multi-billion pesos 24-percent block of sequestered shares in San Miguel Corp. (SMC) belong to the government for its use to benefit the coconut farmers, a peasant group warned that the administration candidates will be rejected in next year’s election.
(Last of three parts) For coconut farmers, the post-Marcos era was a period of dashed hopes. In the so-called re-democratization process, interests of the old and new oligarchs and political bosses merged to keep the tillers impoverished as instruments of plunder, perfected during the martial law years, were refined in captive institutions, critics of the [...]
