National Transformation Council goes to Cebu

What happened to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad during a speech he made at the University of the Philippines (UP) when he was physically accosted by indignant students and even pelted with coins is a sign that our youth are angry and frustrated at the Aquino regime. They vented their ire against Sec. Abad for his continued defense of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) that was declared as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. If they are mad at Abad, surely they are mad at the President.

I’m glad that student dissent is alive and literally kicking in UP! That statue of a naked man in front of UP called “The Oblation” says it all, that in UP, the students will not take hook, line and sinker what our government officials tell them. Shame on the UP professors for chastising those students and demanding them to apologize to Sec. Abad!

I recall an incident during the dying years of the Marcos dictatorship, just a few years before the EDSA revolt, as a Marcos Cabinet official entered the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel and suddenly one table murmured “Tuta.” Then the next table raised their voices and repeated the word “Tuta” and soon, the whole lobby was like a chorus of angry people literally shouting “Tuta” to that cabinet official, who left the hotel flustered.

What those angry students did was to remind us of then Pres. Ferdinand Marcos who was greeted by a massive student protest that became the historic “First Quarter Storm.” Since we are now in the last quarter of the year, allow me to dub that protest incident as the “Last Quarter Storm.”

What is happening to our nation today? We’ve got a President whose impeachment case was thrown out of Congress and now he openly says that he is “open” to extending his term, via a constitutional amendment so he could stay in power longer than allowed by law. Isn’t that exactly what Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos did when he declared martial law 42 years ago and threw out the 1935 Constitution that allowed him only a total of eight years in office? So now there’s no difference between the Marcoses and the Aquinos! They both lust for political power!

So what can we do when our President who claims to be clean and listens to “his Bosses” yet retains Sec. Abad, Energy Sec. Petilla or DSWD’s Dinky Soliman despite the problems they have caused our nation? Our Vice-President Jejomar Binay too has been cornered by his own “bata-bata” who are openly testifying against him for corruption in that overpriced Makati Office and Parking building. Yet the Ombudsman refuses to take cognizance of the damning evidence being presented to the public against Binay.

What I see here is a serious failure of justice to make our government leaders accountable for their actions. So now you know that the UP students are indignant at this government, yet the so-called “silent majority” has remained silent while our politicians make a mockery of our justice system. With all this information… again we ask, where do we go from here?

For us Cebuanos, next week, on Oct. 1, the National Transformation Council (NTC) will kick off at the Mariner’s Court in ALU Compound near the Ft. San Pedro. The theme of this historic event is in Cebuano “Singgit Sugbo Alang sa Pagbag-o! Panawagan para sa halapad nga kausaban.” Translated, “Shout Cebu for Renewal! A Call for a Broad Change.”

This was in answer to the Lipa Declaration that was signed last Aug. 27 by a multi-sectoral group led by Archbishop Ramon Arguelles of Lipa, Bishop Emeritus Fernando Capalla of Davao City and Cebu’s beloved Ricardo Cardinal Vidal who were joined by leaders of evangelical churches led by Pastor Art Corpuz and Muslim clerics and leaders and civil society.

With the centralized system of governance led by our present crop of politicians who have become rotten to the core, it seems that the NTC is fast becoming a better alternative so we could clean the slate and go back and have a morally upright government. Indeed we need transformation for all.

No, the NTC isn’t calling for another EDSA Revolution, but a real transformation. This is why the Lipa Declaration states, “Therefore, faithful to the objective moral law and to the universally honored constitutional principle that sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them, we declare that President Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd has lost the moral right to lead the nation, and had become a danger to the Philippine Democratic and Republican state and to the peace, freedom, security and moral and spiritual well-being of the Filipino people. We further declare that we have lost all trust and confidence in President Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd, and we call upon him to immediately relinquish his position.” See you in Cebu City on Oct. 1 at the Mariner’s Court. The time has come for real change!

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