Like Arroyo Like Aquino? Same Cabinet/Government – Same Anti-people Policies Published on July 10, 2010

Like Arroyo Like Aquino? Same Cabinet/Government – Same Anti-people Policies

Published on July 10, 2010

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Of all decisions Aquino made in his first week, it is “his cabinet appointments that raised more questions than hope,” said Renato Reyes Jr., secretary general of Bayan (New Patriotic Alliance). “The cabinet appointments are a reflection of the policy direction the new administration will take. Some of the appointments don’t give much hope for change.”

“The cabinet that he has formed recycles old faces – former Arroyo officials who will now occupy key positions – with new ones particularly in the justice post basically providing the embellishment of token reform,” said a CENPEG analysis of the new president’s administration.

Except for the new Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, many of the Aquino cabinet appointees are either representatives or members of big businesses and landed elite, or, as Terry Ridon, national chair of League of Filipino Students, described them, they are “recycled” government technocrats that “have long pursued the policy of limiting the role of government in the delivery of social services and access to basic infrastructure such as electricity, water and petroleum products.”

With such people at the helm, “change for the worse” seems to loom over ordinary Filipinos such as the health workers, said Emma Manuel, chair of Alliance of Health Workers, who cited as example the new Health secretary Dr. Enrique Ona.

“We are hoping for change that will move forward, not backward, in terms of providing health for all,” Dr. Geneve Rivera, secretary-general of Health Alliance for Democracy, said in a statement. Dr. Ona was former director of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI). His track record there, said Dr Rivera, was marked not just by union-busting but also by pushing heavily for “corporatization of government hospitals and medical tourism, the exact opposite of what the Filipino people urgently need in terms of health care.”
.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2010/07/10/like-arroyo-like-aquino-same-cabinetgovernment-%E2%80%93-same-anti-people-policies/