Each candidate for president is talking about development and change. From those big concepts, they will reveal that what they mean by development is infrastructure and investments, towards job creation and poverty alleviation.
None of them though are talking about the construction of roads and better public transport as connected to air pollution. None of them are talking about urban development as interwoven with reducing our carbon footprint.
The most important platform a Presidential candidate must have is one for the environment. It is the one that they need to be clear about, that they need to work on beyond imagining the environment as mere resource that should be, must be sold, like we have no choice. Here is where we need to hear a pro-people stance, one that will dare say no to big business, irresponsible mining, illegal loggers, oligarchs and transnational corporations.
A real platform for the environment is the ultimate pro-poor platform. It is what will distribute wealth equitably, it is what will allow for our indigenous peoples to continue caring for and earning from their land, it is what can be the impetus for changing the impoverished provincial conditions across the country.
I’m pretty sure Malacañang knows it, we all know it, and even the voting masses can see through it: that when the Palace uses public money to talk dirty about Mar Roxas’s political rivals, that in fact, it is doing the classic foot-in-mouth.
So when it says the next President must “lead by example,” one cannot help but ask: so what kind of example has this current administration been for all of us the past six years?
If they’ve been leading by example, what is it that we must emulate from them, and what kind of leadership is Roxas inheriting exactly when he says he’s continuing Matuwid Na Daan?
Triggered by The Rundown 2016, an ABS-CBN News Channel and UP Economic Society program that aired live on January 29, here is another issue that one must take into consideration when deciding on who to vote for. The Rundown asked the first batch of its Senatorial candidates about their stand on divorce, and to have had only one senatorial candidate say yes to divorce among the many who were there, is just utterly disappointing.
Of course the show’s format was such that the second batch of Senatorial candidates were not asked the same questions as the first batch, which does make one wonder: how do you choose among these candidates when we don’t ask them about the same issues? (more…)
If there is an issue that should be part of the decision to vote for anyone at all this coming elections, it is the Lumad killings, and the injustice that those who survive continue to live with. Thousands of Lumad are in evacuation centers, living off lugaw if there is food at all, away from the productivity of caring for their land, away from the schools that nurture their children, away from their homes.
The bigger picture we are looking at is that of mining, and how the next President must choose a side: the Lumad and their ancestral lands or the transnational mining firms and the business they bring in.
There is no in-betweens here. One cannot stand for one and not stand against the other.