Anti-mining group to launch campaign against Villar, Angara, Enrile, Gordon

MANILA, Philippines—Anti-mining advocates on Tuesday identified four senatorial candidates they said they would campaign against for having interests in mining and who they feared would push the pro-mining agenda in the Senate.

Jaybee Garganera, national coordinator of Alyansa Tigil Mina, said the candidates for the Senate must take a firm stand on different mining issues “plaguing the country.”

“We challenge the candidates to take a stand on mining. At the national level, we are campaigning against senatorial bets who have interests in mining and who we believe will push for their agenda to promote pro-mining policies,” he said in a statement.

Garganera identified the four senatorial candidates his group will campaign against as former Las Piñas Rep. Cynthia Villar and Aurora Rep. Sonny Angara of Team PNoy, and Cagayan Rep. Jack Enrile and former senator Richard Gordon of the United Nationalist Alliance.

He noted the candidates’ connections to businesses with mining interests or which have links to these.

Villar’s family, he said, owns Queensberry Mining, which is directly involved in the King-king copper-gold project in Compostela Valley. Angara is a member of the board of directors of Aurora Pacific Ecozone and Freeport Authority, while Gordon is an independent director of Atlas Mining Corp. Enrile hails from Cagayan “where anti-mining advocates are threatened and some killed,” Garganera said.

On Tuesday, dozens of advocates from Garganera’s group, along with other anti-mining activists, staged a demonstration at the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the  Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

The group staged a symbolic lock-down of the agency in a protest they called “‘Tao Muna-Hindi Mina” (People First, Not Mining) and demanded a moratorium on mining activities in the country.

“The Tao Muna-Hindi Mina campaign seeks to put at center stage large-scale destructive mining as a major electoral issue that candidates need to respond to,” said Emmanuel Amistad, executive director of the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines.

“But even before and beyond elections, candidates as well as government itself must be able to heed the peoples demand for an end to large-scale destructive mining,” he said.

Fr. Marlon Lacal, executive secretary of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines AMRSP), challenged candidates to “put people first before profit, people first before power, God and Creation first before Mammon and greed.”

“It demands no less than a shift from ‘soulless development’ to a development paradigm that takes paramount the care of Creation wherein our generation and future generations’ survival depend on,” he said.

Judy A. Pasimio of LILAK-Purple Action for Indigenous Women’s Rights said mining was no longer just an issue among environmentalists.

“Mining is a human rights issue. The different forms of human rights violations being experienced by the women, men and children especially from the indigenous communities in mining areas, need to be recognized, and be addressed by the government and those who are wanting to join the government through this election,” she said.