Filipinos who suffer daily from rising
prices, low wages, high unemployment and landlessness are fully aware that there
is nothing but empty bluster behind Aquino’s SONA claims... Aquino has resorted
to a publicity trick of airbushing a thin slice of reality and presenting it as
the entirety.
MEDIA RELEASEBy CPP Information Bureau
30 July 2014
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today called on the Filipino people to expose and repudiate the lies and illusions churned out by Benigno Aquino III during his state of the nation address last Monday 28 July.
“Aquino’s state of the nation address was built on a foundation of lies,” said the CPP. “It painted a picture of progress and hope to conceal the reality of rapidly deteriorating conditions that impose heavier socio-economic burdens on the broad masses of the Filipino people,” said the CPP.
“Amid the worsening crisis of the ruling system, Aquino has resorted to spewing outright lies in a vain attempt to hoodwink the Filipino people,” added the CPP. “He has, however, succeeded only in further stoking the people’s dissatisfaction as he made claims which the Filipino people know are out-and-out false boasts.”
“Among the starkest lies in Aquino’s SONA was his claim of delivering emergency aid to Yolanda victims within 24 hours. It is common knowledge that his entire government was Noynoying for at least 36 hours, that is until video footages started to be broadcast showing the extent of damage caused by the typhoon,” pointed the CPP. “He further claimed to have restored electricity in all typhoon-hit areas by Christmas Day 2013, when, in fact, even large parts of Tacloban City were still in the dark until mid-March 2014.”
“Aquino also lied about the rehabilitation of tens of thousands of families displaced by the armed siege and aerial bombing by the armed forces last September 2013 (in Zamboanga City) which resulted in the intentional destruction of entire communities of urban poor and ordinary income earners,” added the CPP. “Contrary to Aquino’s claims, tens of thousands remain in evacuation centers as they are fenced off from land where their houses once stood and forced to relocate to other places away from their livelihood.”
“The Filipino people, who suffer daily from rising prices, low wages, high unemployment and landlessness, are fully aware that there is nothing but empty bluster behind Aquino’s claims of addressing unemployment, homelessness, rising costs of education and health, spiralling prices, corruption and criminality,” said the CPP. “Aquino has resorted to anecdotes to support his assertions of change and progress in a slick publicity trick of airbushing a thin slice of reality and present it as an image of the entirety.”
The CPP pointed out that Aquino’s claims of reducing the number of people below the poverty line by 2.5 million (from figures in early 2013) does not reflect the actual state of the people, but was attained only through statistical manipulation of revising standards of poverty in 2012. Aquino’s claims of having an additional 1.6 million employed over the past year is not an achievement, rather, a failure to substantially make a dent on the problem of nearly 30 million unemployed and underemployed Filipinos. The use of deception and violence in the Aquino-Cojuangco’s Hacienda Luisita to prevent genuine land reform is repeated all over the country.
“The picture of Philippine society was drawn by Aquino for his audience of big landlords, big bourgeois compradors, foreign big business and foreign banks, who are all largely satisfied with the implementation of neoliberal policies set forth by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, as well as with the all-out war of suppression of the people and Aquino’s close compliance with US foreign policy and military dictates,” said the CPP.
“In a desperate effort to downplay the real state of the people, Aquino’s police forces barricaded the streets leading to the congress to prevent tens of thousands of protesters from exposing the real conditions of the toiling masses of workers and peasants,” added the CPP. “The image of the police barricades and the overwhelming use of force is representative of the state of widespread abuses of human rights in the country.”
“After four years of rule, Aquino has proven himself to be no different from past presidents in terms of serving the interests of foreign big business, landlords, compradors and big bureaucrat capitalists,” said the CPP. “Over the last two years of his term, he is bound to face the Filipino people’s growing wrath and the mounting demands for his ouster.”
