LUCENA CITY, PHILIPPINES – The College Editors Guild of the Philippines, an alliance of more than 75 university publications nationwide, lambasted President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s October 30’s primetime speech in defense of his “pork” and the Disbursement Allocation Program, tagging the act as “an awful muddling of the evils.”
According to Alex Pacalda, Secretary-General of CEGP-Southern Tagalog, “Once again, he has proved that for three and a half years, he has been lying to his so-called “bosses” about economic growth and development, while seeking to enable himself and his cohorts to steal funds coming from the blood and sweat of the masses.”
Pacalda added, “His use of media outlets to deliver his divisive and diversionary speeches only means that he is half-hearted on affirming to the calls of the people; also, he is ever-desperate to defend the interests of his allies in government.”
The young journalist further stated that in the Southern Tagalog region, land-use conversion schemes and “militarization” efforts are executed by state forces in order to “burden and terrorize” the people, endangering the latter’s livelihood and even their very lives.
“We will not forget the recent harassment of our fellow campus journalists and students by military and police elements, including private goons in Brgy. Patungan, Maragondon, Cavite for their youth cultural camp is evident of the readiness of the government to instill terror to its people wanting to expose the truth. This is reinforced by pork barrel allocations for counterinsurgency plans like PAMANA and Oplan Bayanihan, which is more than what the government allocates to state universities and colleges in need of higher state subsidy,” Pacalda asserted.
CEGP-Southern Tagalog, as a patriotic and democratic alliance of student publications, calls for the abolition of the pork barrel and other discretionary and lump-sum funds and for rechanneling these to basic social services to deliver true development for the Filipinos.
“We encourage all student publications to please utilize the campus press to express the truth not usually said in mainstream media, thereby erasing the myths of transparency and a corruption-free government once and for all; also strengthening the cause in the wide campaign of the people against corruption,” Pacalda ended.
