MANILA, Philippines – Following Budget Secretary Florencio Abad’s reaction to the protest held against him at the University of the Philippines (UP), a militant group on Sunday said the “time for sober discourse has ended.”
“The time for ‘sober discourse’ has long ended,” Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) – Manila Chairperson Francisco Mariazeta III said in a statement on the 42nd anniversary of martial law. “As bribery, corruption, patronage politics and nepotism persist, the people could not be expected to idly sit down while the culprits fill their ears with half-baked lies to justify their anti-people policies.”
Mariazeta was reacting to Abad’s statement that he wanted to engage the UP students in a “frank, sober discourse” but was instead mobbed by the protesters.
Bayan said corruption and those who are accused of it should not go unchallenged.
Abad has been accused of plunder for crafting the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which has been dubbed “presidential pork” by its critics. The DAP, which was allegedly used to bribe senators into impeaching former chief justice Renato Corona, was later declared partly unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Mariazeta said it was about time that people “express their anger” against the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.
He echoed the statement of Stand-UP, which led the protest against Abad last Wednesday.
Stand-UP earlier said Abad was not welcome in the university because of his alleged involvement in corruption cases.
“It would have been unforgivable to let him get away without showing the anger felt by each and every Filipino suffering every single day from dire poverty and oppression,” the group said in a separate statement.
It said DAP promotes patronage politics and gives Aquino the “power to control” other branches of government.
“Civility and decorum at the height of social unrest and deprivation is consent to the existing status quo and a betrayal to the genuine essence of democracy, a very valuable lesson from the dark days of Martial Law,” Stand-UP explained.
A group of UP professors supported the students, saying the protest “was the culmination of collective anger and frustration at the failure of this government to explain DAP, and the ditching of the impeachment complaints filed against a President who refuses to be accountable to the people.”
Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND-UP) said students should “passionately challenge the system.”
“We should never be afraid of debates. We do, however, refuse to engage in talk that will only lend credence to the façade of democracy and academic freedom we currently have,” it added in reaction to Abad’s comment that he wanted a dialogue with the students.
Abad was in UP that day as a speaker in a forum that tackled the national budget.
CONTEND-UP warned against allowing “state repression to cast its shadow on our campus in the name of respect and responsible behavior flaunted by government functionaries whose moral track records are highly dubious.”
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