No to term extension! No to Charter Change! Join the broad multisectoral inter-faith Anti-Charter Change Mobilization in Makati on Friday, December 12. UP students assembly point is at Palma Hall Lobby at 11:30 AM.
Posts published during December, 2008
The STAND-UP (Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights – UP) 12th ANNIVERSARY WEEK-LONG CELEBRATION will be held on December 8-13, 2008 and will culminate in a concert with various mainstream and alternative bands in cooperation with the Office of Student Regent at the UP Sunken Garden. The events during the week are as follows:
December 5, Friday:
STATE OF WORKER’S RIGHTS YEAR-END REPORT 2008
with Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR)
1:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Benitez Hall Auditorium, UP College of Education
December 6, Saturday:
ROAD PAINTING SA ACAD OVAL
with the Office of the Student Regent
10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Stretch of AS to College of Education, Academic Oval
A few weeks ago, a newborn baby found its way to our home, brought in by the childcare agency apparently because the abandoned infant’s supposed foster home backed out the last minute. The baby boy’s the third baby we’re fostering ever since my parents started accommodating abandoned infants.
Some of us at home have been waking up in the middle of the night every night the past few weeks now. The infant turned one-month old last weekend, which became an excuse for us to have spaghetti and barbecue for lunch and dinner.
One day every November, the resident fellows convene before dawn at Quezon Hall for an annual frat pictorial ala class picture on the occasion of our anniversary. It has to be taken before half past six in the morning because any later than that and the sun would be high enough to wash out the background. We barely made it on time this year. I’ve been taking the photographs ever since I joined early in 2007.
Some of my colleagues in the University Student Council and I joined the youth rally Tuesday last week to condemn the Arroyo administration’s pronouncements of Charter change and term extension. That was the day before the House of Representatives’ Justice Committee junked the latest attempt to unseat President Arroyo through impeachment.
We held a short program with the people at Plaza Miranda before snaking around the Quiapo area to encourage people to join the march to Mendiola where we were eventually blocked by the usual police barricade. After holding a brief program near Morayta, we dispersed peacefully.
We all know the President has the House of Representatives. And after sowing division among opposition senators (fueled by their own political ambitions) in the Senate, it’s now also effectively hers, too. The Supreme Court is also soon going to be hers with her impending appointment of seven SC Justices, effectively transforming the highest court in the land into an assembly of Arroyo appointees. The military leadership is also hers. The last impeachment attempt before 2010 has been junked. Her Congressional allies are a few votes short of convening a Constituent Assembly to change the Constitution. The entire machinery of the government is effectively at her disposal. Maintaining the loyalty of all these crocodiles, of course, entails an enormous cost on ordinary Filipino taxpayers.
Victor Villanueva
law student, leftist, national democratic, film school graduate, photography hobbyist