Foreigners take souvenir photos at the Bonifacio Shrine in Manila on Saturday, a day before the commemoration of the revolutionary hero’s 151st birth anniversary. PHOTO BY RUY MARTINEZ
The militant Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) will mark Bonifacio Day Sunday with a rally against the administration of President Benigno Aquino 3rd.
Roger Soluta, KMU secretary general, said the group will call for the abolition of the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and demand the implementation of a P16,000 monthly minimum wage.
Soluta said KMU will also call for the genuine land reform and the accountability of all government officials involved in corruption cases related to pork barrel funds.
“We are calling on all Filipinos to continue Bonifacio’s struggle and join us on November 30 to protest Aquino’s puppet, anti-poor, and corrupt government. We have every reason to go out in the streets and hold protests against the Aquino government,” he said.
Citing the “drastic increase in cases of human-rights violations” in Mindanao, Soluta said the protest “will also showcase the people of Mindanao’s resistance to a government that violates their rights in order to uphold the interests of big foreign mining and logging companies.”
He said Aquino “is as brutal as Spanish conquistadores of Bonifacio’s time toward the people of Mindanao.”
He said the President’s subservience to the US, opposition to genuine land reform, greed for pork barrel funds, and fostering of illusions about the country’s development would have been the target of a revolution led by Bonifacio.
“The Aquino government embodies the social evils against which Bonifacio and the Filipino toiling masses rose up. It reminds us of elite Filipinos who collaborated with Spanish colonialism and the exploitative friars of Bonifacio’s time,” Saluto said.