military « Victor Villanueva

Posts tagged with military

August 28, 2010

Initial observations of the 2011 Aquino budget

President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III (photo from www.gov.ph)

The Aquino Administration submitted its budget proposal for 2011 to Congress this week. It is through the budget where one can see the priorities of the government, in how much it intends to spend on various programs of government. For 2011, the government under the Aquino administration intends to spend P1.645 trillion.

In his budget message, the President claimed that the spending proposal of the government for next year is anchored on “reform”. The budget claims to have a “bias to the poor and the vulnerable”. However, right at the onset, it is still oriented towards severe austerity, masked with the euphemism “fiscal responsibility,” a government spending orientation that has been the standard policy for decades. It is a policy intended not to simply ensure that the “meager resources” of the government are spent wisely for the people, to ensure that the government is able to pay its foreign and local creditors its monstrous, anomalous and scandalous debt.

Just to show you how scandalous and hypocritical the government’s budget orientation is, the Aquino Administration proposes to pay foreign creditors and financial institutions a whopping P823.27 billion next year (P357.09 billion in interest payments, P466.18 billion in principal amortization not formally included in the P1.645 trillion total budget). According to the initial budget analysis and report of IBON Foundation, the increase in interest payments alone “is the largest absolute increase in interest payments in the country’s history and, at a 29.2% increase from the year before, is the second largest percentage increase after the 32.6% growth in 2000.”

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December 10, 2009

Sowing the seeds of a nationwide declaration

The way the Arroyo administration is stretching the meaning of “rebellion” is utterly absurd. If this is allowed, we’re making possible a bizarre scenario where the Arroyo administration may connive with its many warlord allies across the country to stage any “massing of arms” in order to justify a nationwide declaration of martial law as they near the day they are booted out of office in the 2010 elections. A few days ago, the Defense Secretary came up with an odd press release revealing something we’ve known all along anyway–that there are private armies all over the country. Suddenly, the government claims Ampatuan supporters have arrived in Manila. Then arms and a grenade are discovered near the NBI in Manila. They’re clearly beginning to sow the seeds of justifying a nationwide declaration. All they need is to stage another shocking performance.

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October 10, 2009

Abusing the people’s tragedy

For a while now, I’ve been at loss as to what to blog. Scenes of devastation and the actual loss of life and property to millions of Filipinos was overwhelming. It didn’t feel right blogging about anything else where almost everything else will pale in gravity. Class guilt perhaps, the very fact that I am able to blog in convenience indicates that, unlike majority of Filipinos who are poor, I am “unaffected.” For a while, blogging in the time of crisis reeked of insensitivity. Some people say blogging and online social media networks played a crucial role in the relief and rescue operations. I agree. But then again, the people who need the relief aren’t online, and prolonged online “involvement” seemed to me like a convenient excuse not to immerse with the people and get dirty with the actual operations. Posting and re-posting relief and rescue operations has to translate into actual relief and rescue operations. Many times, especially during the immediate days after the typhoons, they do, as proven by the thousands who flocked to organized relief operations. With an inept and inutile government, private citizens and civilian organizations needed to fill the vacuum in social services. But for how long? Especially when all those volunteers go back to their schools and to their workplaces?

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May 25, 2009

Bayan calls on Arroyo government to surface Fil-Am activist Melissa Roxas and companions

The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan is calling on the Arroyo government, the Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to immediately surface Melissa Roxas, an American citizen of Filipino descent, and a member of BAYAN-USA and the cultural group Habi Arts based in Los Angeles, California.

Roxas was abducted last May 19 at around 1:30 pm in Sitio Bagong Sikat, Bgy. Kapanikian, La Paz, Tarlac. She was with two other volunteers, Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Handoc.

Based on reports filed by the human rights group Karapatan and the La Paz police, Roxas and her companions were taken by at least 8 fully-armed, bonnet-clad men on board two motorcycles and a Besta van without any plate numbers.

Since the abduction, there has been no word of the whereabouts and condition of Roxas and her companions.

Roxas is the first case of a Fil-Am activist to be abducted by suspected state security forces.

“It is indeed urgent that Melissa and her companions be surfaced. No harm must come to them. Their rights must be respected. We are outraged that these abductions continue despite repeated condemnation here and abroad,” said Bayan secretary general Renato M. Reyes, Jr.

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May 7, 2009

Arroyo order phony unless generals punished

On P25M reward for informants on political killings

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino today said that President Arroyo’s order to put up a P25 million fund for a reward system for informants on political killings is phony and hypocritical unless she punishes her generals.

“Several independent investigations, fact-finding missions and official inquiries have all pointed to the military as culprits in cases of extra-judicial killings, abductions, harassment and torture yet not one general or military official has been punished despite glaring physical or circumstancial evidence,” Palatino said.

Palatino cited, for instance, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or special executions Philip Alston’s report and star witness on the Cadapan-Empeno case Raymond Manalo’s testimony.

Alston, in 2007, criticized the military for being in a `state of total denial’ of the involvement of its members in political killings, while Manalo requested for protection in a sworn statement submitted to the Supreme Court after he recounted his first-hand account of abduction, detention and torture by the military before escaping on August 13, 2007. Manalo also positively identified Ret. Gen. Jovito Palparan in a military camp where he claimed he saw abducted University of the Philippines students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan being kept and tortured.

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June 14, 2008

Picket for Missing UP Students

June 04, 2008. As the Court of Appeals conducted a hearing for the combined writ of amparo and writ of habeas corpus to compel the Philippine Military to surface abducted UP students Karen Empeno & Sherlyn Cadapan, dozens of activists including relatives of the missing staged a picket outside the premises of the second highest court in the country.

I went to the picket and I also spoke in behalf of the University Student Council and the other concerned students of UP, where both Karen & Sherlyn come from. Bang and Lester were also there.