A THANK you party was thrown on Monday by the new Speaker of the House, thanking old and new allies for a change in leadership.
It’s a thank you party with three women on the spotlight as powerbrokers: Gloria Arroyo, the new leader in the House, Imee Marcos from the North, Sara Duterte from the South.
Arroyo is the first woman speaker of the House of political butterflies, backslappers and backstabs. They try to show this a celebration of women in politics for unseating the former macho bully Speaker.
But such celebratory moods are not felt by women all across the nation.
In Bulacan, an elderly 57-year old woman was among the 19 arrested by police who disperse the strike camp of NutriAsia workers. An image posted online showed the woman bloodied in her nose. Police gives no special treatment to anyone, even four alternative media members were arrested.
Regularization of contractual workers is an agenda stressed by the President for Congress. DOLE has ordered the multi-billion peso food-giant NutriAsia to regularize its 900 contractual workers.
The irony that a food supply manufacturer could not provide regular jobs for their workers, whose wives do worry about what food to put on the table if their jobs are lost. There is no thank you party here, but questions to why the police treat workers this way, and how the House will ensure the rights of the working-class families.
In Surigao del Sur, mothers and daughters are among the 1,607 Manobos who left their evacuation camp in Diatagon Gym because of the incessant presence of soldiers who blocked food and water relief to them. They walked 90 kilometers to Tandag to dialogue with provincial local government officials to address the presence of the military in their communities in Lianga and San Agustin that have disrupted the community from tending their farms and sending their children to the Lumad schools Alcadev and TRIFPSS.
Mothers are the most burdened when evacuations happen. Mothers have to worry about food for their children, ensuring they are secure from day til bedtime in makeshift beds. The issue of the Manobos is that they want to be left alone in their farms and in their schools. The Manobos had been evacuating almost every year due to the military operations in their land. They believe this is due to the insistence of mining investors who want to clear them off their own land.
Nine years ago in July, while these same Manobo community were worrying about their food supply in their evacuation center, Arroyo, who was then president, was lavished by allies with a P 1-million dinner in New York.
Such parties among politicians, oblivious to the pains of the country, shows nothing has changed.
tyvelez@gmail.com