Militant urban poor group calls Aquino ‘a big liar' (Breaking the silence from protests after Aquino’s Second SONA)

NEWS RELEASE l July 29, 2011

MANILA, Philippines—Militant urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) broke the week’s sudden hush from protests after its members stormed the foot of Mendiola three days after President Benigno Aquino III delivered his Second State of the Nation Address

The group, carrying placards with images of the president wearing Pinocchio’s long nose, lambasted Aquino’s SONA statements about the poverty situation in the country.

They labeled the president “a big liar” who uses the poverty situation as an “excuse to open up the national budget to massive bureaucratic corruption with the adding of P16-billion to government’s dole-out program in the proposed national budget for next year.”

Carlito Badion, Kadamay national vice chair belied Aquino’s statement that a million family was saved from hunger by the administration’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), his administration’s poverty alleviation program primarily in the form of cash dole-outs given to the poorest of poor Filipino families.

“Aquino is a big liar no less than Arroyo when he claims that there are fewer poor and hungry Filipinos nowadays, Badion said.

“He has no right to say so when he did nothing to control the price hikes of food and basic commodities. Neither did he create real jobs that will stabilize the economic well-being of Filipino families. Neither did he increase the wages of Filipino workers and government employees. And neither did he solve the long-standing call of our farmers to have land to till,” Badion added.

In real terms, he did nothing, even attempted to liberate to the poor from poverty, contradictory to what he said in his last state of the nation address, according to the militant group.

Php16-B additional CCT Budget

The Palace-approved 2012 national budget was submitted to Congress a day after Aquino’s SONA with the Conditional Cash Transfer getting an additional 16-billion pesos additional funding to the 2011 budget of 21-billion pesos.

CCT would have a total of 37-billion pesos to be given in cash to a target three million family beneficiaries for the year 2012. This despite the big number of those who cast doubts on its effectiveness in combatting poverty, as well as complaints from its beneficiaries.

“Until now, everyone doubts whether the dole-outs reach the poor families it is intended to go to,” Badion said.

“Early this month, we asked for DSWD to show us the transparency report of its implementation of CCT. They promised to give us but we got nothing,” he added.

CCT, with its big budget, remained only as mitigation, not a solution to the country’s widespread poverty according to Badion.

“It is only a continuation of the past administration’s costly and corruption-prone cover-up to the government’s inadequacy to address the growing call for social reforms, specifically for jobs and land to till, including the social unrest in the countryside.”

Options for the CCT’s fund

"If the CCT's 37-billion peso-budget would be realigned to providing social services, hundreds of thousands of schools, hospitals and housing units would be constructed.

And if the CCT’s fund would be spent in creating large-scale national industries both in the cities and the countryside, many families would be better off in the long run, Badion remarked.

“But Aquino will never do so as long as he kept his penchant for neoliberal policies that has dwarfed our economy to be agricultural in production and export-oriented and import-dependent in its market,” he ended.

Reference: Carlito Badion, KADAMAY National Vice Chairperson (09393873736)