FARMERS in Kidapawan, North Cotabato province, and neighboring places were begging the government for rice because their farms had been hit by a drought owing to El Niño.
Instead, the government gave them bullets and truncheons, killing three of them and busting the heads of scores of others.
If that’s not ultimate cruelty, I don’t know what is.
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It’s not surprising an incident of extreme cruelty toward the poor happened during the administration of Noynoy Aquino.
In the early days of the administration of his mother, Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, 13 farmers were killed after they were shot by policemen in Mendiola, Manila, during a rally where participants asked the government for equal land distribution.
That carnage became known as the Mendiola Massacre.
On Nov. 16, 2004, policemen and soldiers shot farmers of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita protesting its noncompliance with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. A total of 14 protesters died.
President Noynoy and his late mother, Cory, grew up surrounded by wealth.
They don’t know how it is to be poor and deprived.
All those pronouncements by mother and son about loving the poor appear hollow and insincere.
President Aquino seems incapable of compassion as evidenced by his no-show at the arrival honors for the 44 police commandos who were massacred in Maguindanao.
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The incompetence of Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya and airport general manager Jose Honrado was apparent once again in the five-hour power outage at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 over the weekend, leaving 15,000 domestic passengers stranded.
If this country were a totalitarian state, Abaya and Honrado would have been made to face the firing squad for their criminal negligence.
It is too late to fire the two since their boss, P-Noynoy, will be bowing out of the service in two months, anyway.
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Because presidential candidate Grace Poe has been seen using the plane of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), the conglomerate’s top honcho, Ramon Ang, is being accused of favoring the neophyte senator.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, SMC has contributed equally to all the presidential candidates’ campaign.
Ang is a friend to every politician and government official.