Tagged with AKBAYAN …

Aug 04 2010
1 Comment
Congress, Philippine Left, politics

The House of Gloria

Last Monday, Rep. Walden Bello of Akbayan Party delivered a scathing speech condemning former President GMA for high corruption. He said that corruption was the signature of the Arroyo government. He condemned the allies and cohorts of the previous government, whose acts he called porcine. He said that GMA should be brought to the National Penitentiary, and that she doesn’t deserve to be in Congress. (Download the speech here)

The speech was delivered shortly after former President GMA had her oath-taking before the members of Congress as the representative of the 4th district of Pampanga.

In the House of Gloria, what Walden did cannot be tolerated. Walden was interrupted several times during his speech, with one veteran representative saying that it was taking too long. Another representative – remember him, his name is Rep. Marcoleta of Alagad – complained that Walden, a professor and a public intellectual, was tackling too many issues, and it was too much for his brain to handle. Continue reading →

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May 13 2010
1 Comment
2010 elections, LGBT, LGBT rights, politics

The homophobes lost, but…

Rep. Abante during the Anti-Discrimination Bill hearing

Here’s some good news: three candidates from the conservative bloc lost in the senatorial and congressional elections. Bienvenido Abante, an incumbent representative in District 6, Manila City, lost to his rival Sandy Ocampo, a former congresswoman and currently Manila’s deputy mayor. Atty. Jo Imbong, legal counsel of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, ran for senator under the Catholic church-backed Ang Kapatiran Party, is among the bottom-dwellers in the senatorial race. Another pro-life bet, ex-senator Kit Tatad, has been unable to surpass the Top 20 benchmark.

Rep. Abante, as Chair of the House Committee on Human Rights, blocked the passage of a bill penalizing discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. Last year, Rep. Abante filed a bill criminalizing same-sex marriage and prohibiting co-habitation among between partners of the same sex.

He also opposed the enactment of the RH Bill, a controversial measure that provides access to reproductive health information and contraceptives.

Atty. Imbong, on the other hand, is the CBCP lobbyist that has rabidly campaigned against the RH Bill and Anti-Discrimination Bill in most congressional hearings. A “pro-life” advocate, Atty. Imbong has labeled the above bills as part of the Church-opposed DEATH bills, a cluster of measures promoting divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total reproductive health, and homosexuality (same-sex marriage). Continue reading →

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Apr 17 2010
1 Comment
2010 elections, politics

The Daily Grind

24 days before D-day. If I don’t do this now, I won’t be able to do this at all.

The challenge is to blog about the campaign trail, an entry a day. I’ve told someone before that I’ve been remiss with my blogging duties because of the campaign – the hectic schedule, and the rare lulls that are oftentimes spent to catch up with errands that are left behind.

Why not blog about the campaign trail, he suggested.

He’s right. A senatorial campaign is a strange monster . You jump in, you get swallowed. I suppose writing about it would make it easier to digest.

There is more familiarity in a party-list campaign: you deal with constituents you’ve worked with, the niches are clear, and the scale follows boundaries that you have traversed in the past. You know your hooks, you’ve been there, you’ve done that, and you know the limits of the system itself. It is a known playground.

But now, the campaign trail doesn’t end. The next day and its own mob of tasks, statements, and meetings have a way of creeping from behind, without warning, an intruder that has the gall to welcome you to your own home. A week becomes a continuous, seamless loop of days. Before you sleep, no matter if its at 2 or 4 am, you need to meet your deadlines, and then wake up early so you could do some finishing touches, make the sound bite sharper, or the point more resonant.  You are completely aware that it could be for naught, especially in country where politics is a narrative of personal dramas, not of platforms or issues. So you just go ahead, praying that what you’re doing can make a dent.

I admit that there are moments when we ask ourselves why we are doing this. The party-list race is our comfort zone, and had we opted to limit ourselves in that arena, the campaign trail would unfurl with a certain predictability – the kind of messages you can and cannot deploy, the numbers you need to crunch. A party-list campaign would still be hard, but definitely not as hard as a senatorial bid.

But in the middle of the daily grind, we constantly get reminders why we are here – an old woman who handed Risa some money as contribution to her campaign; a student who professed his support, unabashedly, and delivered what is perhaps the most compelling speech about change that I’ve heard since this campaign started; the father who introduced Risa to his young girl, and started conversing with her as people went in and out of the LRT. All of these happened when we weren’t preaching to the choir, while eating in Jollibee or while in transit. It is when we are with them that I realize that we haven’t lost our moorings.

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Nov 13 2009
11 Comments
LGBT, LGBT rights

Bigotry in our ballots

In a decision dated November 11, 2009, the 2nd Division of the Commission on Elections denied the application for accreditation of Ang Ladlad Party-list, a party-list of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders, on moral grounds.

The decision was obviously penned by apes.

Signed by Commissioners Nicodemo Ferrer, Lucenito Tagle, and Elias Yusoph, the resolution quoted the Bible and the Koran to claim that Ang Ladlad tolerates immorality, and therefore should not be accredited. They said practicing homosexuals are a threat to the youth.

What these statements imply is that these commissioners have been denied something fundamental when they were still kids: love. I am sure that they were never hugged.

They find it perfectly acceptable to issue a resolution – a legal document – that sounds like a pastoral letter from CBCP or a manifesto from a fundamentalist group. They were quick to cite biblical verses or lines from the Koran, but forgot a basic tenet in our Constitution: that we are all equal, regardless of who we are.

They forgot that as commissioners, they are men of law, not men of faith. That the Commission on Elections is an institution of democracy, not a temple. That, as pointed out by an activist, they swore by the Bible to uphold the constitution, not the other way around. The issue is simple: use the law to determine whether a group should be accredited or not. There are no other standards – just the law.

How can we trust the COMELEC to modernize the electoral system when the commissioners still live in the Victorian era? Be wary, because those that that been mandated to automate the elections still believe that the Earth is the center of the universe. It is said that they weed out from the voters’ list women who are as outspoken as Etta Rosales, and they use tawas to make counting machines fool-proof and fraud-free.

But wariness is not enough. This bigotry is unacceptable. So I, Jonas Bagas, gay since birth, a practicing homosexual (occasionally during weekdays, but mostly during weekends), join my  fellow lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders condemning this farce. We won’t take this sitting down. I am a proud member of another LGBT-friendly party-list, AKBAYAN, and I will join Ang Ladlad in this struggle against bigotry in our ballots.

If you want to be part of this fight, then join us this Saturday, November 14, 2009, at 9 AM at the University Hotel of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, QC. We will fight back, and we will recruit more.

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