Youth petitioners slam gov’t connivance, ‘yellow opportunism’

A youth group that filed one of the seven Supreme Court petitions against the burial of dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani has slammed the “connivance” of government officials, as well as “yellow opportunism” in light of his Friday interment.

In a statement, Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK) called for immediate exhumation of Marcos’ remains and condemned the Duterte government’s move as “a fractured idea of national healing without social justice.”

SPARK urged the youth to “claim our space to be heard as true inheritors of the Marcos-Aquino debacle,” as various colleges have erupted in protest over the dictator’s surprise burial at the heroes’ cemetery.

“The events right after the burial are proof that the millennials, despite the belittling of our capacity to absorb, even taunting us that we are too detached, have proven ourselves in the ‘parliament of the streets,'” SPARK spokesperson Joanne Lim said.

Lim added that the outrage against the Marcos burial should not be viewed as a “one-day affair.”

“We must push on until justice is served; the culture of impunity is extinguished and we cherish a system of governance where the genuine empowerment of the marginalized is its focal point,” she said.

SPARK decried the sudden burial as reeking of “decaying morality, seeping with the culture of impunity and injustice,” adding that government officials should be held accountable for the “extravagance … bestowed upon the late dictator.”

The group also warned the public of “yellow opportunism,” after allies of former President Benigno Aquino III joined the Friday protests in an apparent bid to “hijack the event.”

““They have been in power for six years and did nothing to prevent this. The culture of impunity was not invented only months ago, they too are guilty of its proliferation. The yellows are just as culpable and repulsive as the sitting President. We must and can remain independent from the opposing faction of the ruling elite,” SPARK said.

In filing their petition on August, SPARK said that millennials have often been blamed for the return of the Marcoses to power.