Bonifacio’s struggle continues as the working class struggles against poverty and oppression

Against the apathy of our own government, today we take to the streets to resound the call, for the country to remember that Gat Andres Bonifacio born today, continues to symbolizethe working class strugglefor equity, social justice, and a decent share in the fruits of our labors.

It is the historical significance that can’t be denied by any government pronouncement moving its commemoration to another day. The symbolism, however, is not lost to us. Moving the holiday when we should honor the martyrdom and sacrifice of the country's only truly working-class hero from November 30 to 29 betrays history. What she has done is to douse cold water over the idea of the important role played by the working class in the struggle against injustice and inequity, relegating it instead to the realm of sentimental remembrance.

The government, and specifically GMA, is unsurprisingly comfortable with this, since if her policies are to be our standard, since when have workers been at the forefront of government's considerations? Can we truly expect the government, especially the President, to fully appreciate the historical significance of a day like November 30?

To this day not a lot of heads have rolled over the violent dispersal of farm workers at Hacienda Luisita and GMA has taken on a hands-off approach to the problem, obviously in deference to the Cojuangcos and the former President. Against this tragedy we see the daily travails of workers everywhere having to grapple with the insistent and intensifying hardships brought about by skyrocketing oil prices, electricity rates, substandard water services, inadequate education, and increasing prices of basic goods.

A hundred and six years into the day when Filipinos, led by a working class hero named Andres Bonifacio, fought with arms to free the nation of its conquistadores, we find our countrymen still shackled today not by a visible foreign enemy, but by the unseen hand of the unforgiving and profit-driven market and the elitist governance of those who subscribe to its neo-liberal program. It is this force born into flesh by the policies, which the government enthusiastically pursues, that is at the root of much of our political and economic problems.

By lowering the tariffs on imported goods to levels that are more than practical and necessary, industries are dying, and workers have had to face year after year of gloomy statistics until we pay the price for capitalists closing shops and packing up. More and more, the number of those whose lives are affected by retrenchment, dismissal, and loss of job security continue to swell.

In its drive for rationalization and streamlining, government is preparing to throw out millions of workers that could otherwise be re-trained and maximized elsewhere in favor of privatized services, which no jobless Filipino will be able to afford in the first place.

In its cozy relationships with big capitalists, the government is only too willing to compromise the interests of the working class in favor of profit. See how the regulatory agencies imbued with the mandate of protecting consumer interests are only too willing to grant rate hike requests from NAPOCOR or Meralco without even much of a fight, much less genuine public consultations.

In its renegotiations of the onerous contracts with independent power producers, government trumpeted the dubious savings of 9 centavos per kilowatt hour, instead of getting to the core of the generous take-or-pay agreements in those contracts and going after the bureaucrats and officials who filled up the lining of their pockets while selling the long-term welfare of the country's economic health down the river soliciting those IPP deals.

In insisting that the likes of Winston Garcia stay on as a head of a delicate institution such as the GSIS, the government is exhibiting a brand of patronage rotten to the core, where political paybacks determine who stay and who goes.

With the continuous adherence of the Arroyo government to the neo-liberal ideology of regional trade blocs such as the APEC and the World Trade Organization, workers everywhere can only expect government to sell them out, ship them out and bail out on their demands.

From all these obstacles we draw our strength, in knowing that we together we shall seize the opportunities for engagement and reform through our collective bargaining and fervent organizing, with the end view of harnessing our political might to vote such elitists out of office, to reconstruct these structures to make government more responsive and accountable and to demand an answer for our calls.

Only by insisting that our rights are inviolable and demandable and in our fortified stance against the abuses of capitalists and their elitist cohorts in government, will we truly be able to realize the very same ideals espoused more than a hundred years ago by Andres Bonifacio.
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Akbayan! Party
Alliance of Progressive Labor