Tuesday, October 6, 2009

REBELS’ EERIE SILENCE IN ONDOY’S MIDST

The normally boisterous activists whom we often see on our streets holding crimson banners and shouting until hoarse anti-government slogans magically disappeared because of a tropical storm like Ondoy. This was the general observation of some residents near rally sites like the House of Representatives along Commonwealth (Batasang Pambansa) on Monday, days after the storm struck majority of Luzon provinces and a big portion of the metro which left more than a hundred dead and caused millions of damages to infrastructure and properties.

Linda Zapanta, a metro-aid cleaner stationed along Commonwealth Avenue admitted to her great disappointment over Bayan Muna and Karapatan’s noticeable absences during search and rescue operations launched in areas heavily affected by Ondoy. In Barangay Bagong Silangan in Quezon City alone which is a mere stone-throw away from Batasang Pambansa, a site often utilized by said groups during their anti-government rallies, 28 people from Bagong Silangan have been confirmed by the National Disaster Coordinating Council as among the hundreds of fatalities of Ondoy.

Bayan Muna which has three incumbent representatives in Congress with each of them receiving more than 50 million in Priority Development Assistance Funds per year has apparently opted to take a back-seat role and relegate all of the hard work to their self-proclaimed nemesis, the AFP and PNP, whose personnel visibly risked their lives to readily jumped into neck-deep murky flood waters in order to save stranded residents from their rooftops. The heroism of the AFP was further proven by the death of two soldiers and five members of the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit during the conduct of search and rescue operations in the municipality of Famy in Laguna.

Also worth mentioning was the lack of any news report stating that local rebels operating in Tarlac, Bulacan, Pampanga, Bataan and Nueva Ecija have launched even a small kind of assistance to any of our less fortunate kababayans who have fallen victims to Ondoy’s wrath. Their posturing as defenders of the people would have been greatly appreciated by the very people they claim to be champions of if they gave even a small portion of the reported 1 billion peso campaign fund they have amassed since early last year specifically for the upcoming elections. Surely, even ten percent of their collected extortion money that they obtained by force from targeted multi-national companies like Globe Telecom would already be of great assistance to the thousands of victims on Ondoy.

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