Edsa at 25: Aquino Is Wasting Legacy of People Power, Say Farmers

Edsa at 25: Aquino Is Wasting Legacy of People Power, Say Farmers

For Filipino farmers, filling a stage with actors and performers is hardly the best way to commemorate the culmination of more than a decade’s fight against the Marcos dictatorship. “It would have been better if President Aquino does something worthy of EDSA 1 such as announce the surrender of the Cojuangco family’s unjust claim on Hacienda Luisita,” Willy Marbella of KMP said.
By INA ALLECO R. SILVERIO
Bulatlat.com
 
MANILA — Wasting the legacy of the 1986 Edsa People Power uprising.

This was how Hacienda Luisita farmworkers and the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) described the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the popular revolt that ousted the Marcos dictatorship and installed Aquino’s mother, Corazon C. Aquino, to the presidency.

“The Aquino administration is in the thick of preparations for the February 25 anniversary of Edsa People Power. It even had tarpaulin banners and high-rise billboards put up all over the metropolis praising President Aquino’s mother and calling her an icon of democracy. For us farmers, it is very hard to accept how the incumbent government is packaging what happened 25 years ago because for us, the legacy of the uprising has been wasted,” said KMP deputy secretary-general for internal affairs Willy Marbella.

In a protest action in front the Supreme Court on February 22, Luisita farmworkers denounced the upcoming government-led Edsa celebration as a farce and sorry tribute to the essence of the People Power uprising. (Photo by Ina Alleco R. Silverio / bulatlat.com)

Marbella said that for KMP, the assertion that democracy and genuine freedom were achieved after Edsa 1 was a based on an illusion.

“Farmers believed the late president Cory Aquino’s promises that she would implement what the dictatorship did not – genuine land reform – but this did not happen. The Cory administration refused to put Hacienda Luisita under agrarian reform after the ratification of the 1987 Constitution. She instead pushed for the passage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of 1998 with the help of the landlord-dominated congress and saved HLI for the Cojuangco family,” he said..... MORE

Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/02/23/edsa-at-25-aquino-is-wasting-legacy-of-people-power-say-farmers/