PM holds ‘SOtaposNA’ actions to highlight plight of workers at local level

Localized online and offline protest activities were conducted Saturday afternoon by chapters of Partido Manggagawa (PM) in different parts of the country, two days before President Duterte delivers his last State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday.

Areas that held local online protest activities include Metro Manila, Cavite, Rizal, Bulacan, Bacolod, Cebu, Davao, and Tagum City.

According to Judy Miranda, PM Secretary-General, this is to highlight the plight of workers and poor communities who suffered the most under Duterte’s deficient and repressive style of governance.

“Ang ating mga komunidad ay hindi gaanong napapansin sa bangayan ng pulitika sa itaas, samantalang sila ang tunay na nakakaranas ng kahirapan at saksi sa nagaganap na karahasan at patayan sa buong bansa. Nasa komunidad ang totoong SONA,” declared Miranda.

One of the issues to highlight is the unresolved killings of PM organizers. Dennis Sequena, PM leader in Cavite, was shot dead by unknown assailants in June 2019 while giving a lecture on basic trade unionism among ecozone workers. PM organizer Orlando Abangan was killed in Talisay City, Cebu in September 2016, at the height of Duterte’s drug war. It is also in Cebu where a peaceful and legitimate protest of retrenched MEPZ workers was met by arrests and detention as in the case of the arrest of “Cebu 5” on November 30 last year.

Other unresolved killings of PM organizers were that of Victoriano Embang (2012) and Rolando Pango (2014) in the island of Negros. These killings, the group said, though they happened during the past administration, remains an agenda of justice that the present administration has the duty to resolve.

Miranda said, “unresolved and unrelenting spate of killings and intensifying trade union repression is a marked failure of the Duterte administration, notwithstanding his epic fail on the issue of endo or contractualization, wage hike, and its poor pandemic response.”

On SONA day, PM members with their “ENDO30” props will be joining the “Despedida” rally led by the Movement against the Anti-Terrorism Act (MATA) at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) grounds.

PM will also be part of the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition Women’s Committee morning contingent who will submit their findings and recommendations to the CHR on the impact of COVID-19 protocols on human rights and labor rights.