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Year: 2019

Social Development and Advocacy Network Calls for Revamp and Immediate Resignation of Comelec Commissioners

Quezon City, Philippines – A social development and advocacy network has recently issued a statement calling for the revamp and resignation of Commission on Elections (COMELEC) officials as a reaction, to what it calls as an ever growing display of incompetence of the COMELEC in pursuing its mandate, especially with the recent abominable decision to give a green light to the midnight substitution bid of Ronald Cardema, former Chairman of National Youth Commission to assume the representation of the party-list Duterte Youth.

 “The COMELEC should be revamped. And urgently so, those who voted in favor of the midnight substitution of the Duterte Youth party representative, should resign. This decision is another blatant display of lack of competence in their decision making, and adds to their already dismal performance in managing the mid-term 2019 election,” Yoly Esguerra, Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc (PMPI) reiterated.

PMPI believes that the COMELEC decision is flawed. There were two obvious reasons why the ruling of the COMELEC should have been otherwise. First, Ronald Cardema is already 34 years old, and under Republic Act (RA) No. 7941, Section 9, he or she must at least be twenty-five (25) but not more than thirty (30) years of age on the day of the election. Second, Cardema filed his notice of substitution at 5:30 P.M. on May 12, Sunday, contrary to Resolution No. 8665, which prescribes the filing of pleadings or motions only during office hours on regular work days.

By these two glaring facts alone, an independent institution like the COMELEC should have decided against it. Even ordinary citizens can understand that these reasons are clearly a blatant disregard of an election rules as prescribed, the statement added.

Party List System bastardized by COMELEC

The party-list system was established through RA 7941 or Party-List System Act, it was meant to give voice and representation for those who are underrepresented sectors or groups such as in labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous culture, women, youth, and other sectors.

We in PMPI in fact hailed it then as a step to give voice to “voiceless” section of society where they can bring their issues on the legislative table and push for solutions and protection of their rights.

Throughout the years however, we saw the system being bastardized and abused by no less than the COMELEC themselves as many party lists were which does not really represent the marginalized were approved by the COMELEC.

That the COMELEC decided in favor of legitimizing the Duterte Youth as party list whose main goal only is to support and protect the President Duterte shows lack of appreciation and understanding of the spirit of party list system.

COMELEC RESIGN!

The PMPI calls for the resignation of the five COMELEC commissioners who approved the substitution bid of former NYC Chairman Ronald Cardema as the first nominee of Duterte Youth party-list.

We continue to ask, by their recent actions, who do they seek to please and obey? Why Ronald Cardema remained in government offices during the election and then suddenly change mind on the eve of May 12, the day before the election? Who benefits from retaining a position in government where you have access to government resources during election? Is this not a strategy to go around the rule that all government officials who will run in an election should resign from office? Who engineered this strategy and who will gain and benefit from this decision?

 “We need a COMELEC that would uphold their own internal rules and regulations and one that can manage a national election without a 7 hours snags in electoral result, and who can explain this gaffes in public and with transparency. We don’t need blind followers. We don’t need more stamp pads. They are too many already in this government,” Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabllo, PMPI NCR-Urban Cluster Bishop Convenor said.

Philippine Misereor Partnership, Inc. (PMPI), is a network of civil society organizations, rights groups, peace and faith-based institutions pushing for policy change in governance and helping communities achieved better lives.

PMPI Post-Election Statement

May 17, 2019

Sheriff Abas
Chairman
Commission on Elections
Dear Mr. Abas,

Greetings from PMPI National Secretariat!

The 2019 midterm election is over. Elections should have been the chance of a people to shape their own destiny. Yet, our experience of elections, regarded as the most massive platform for public participation in governance, has sadly always been missing its point of target.

The just concluded election is no different. The traditional politicians many of whom have graft and corruption cases, those with most money for campaign “tokens” or bribes and those with the most popularity and exposure “won”.

Cheating, fraud and vote-buying abound. No less than the President consider vote-buying “normal”. The vote-buying and glitches on the vote counting machines (VCM) are substantiated by reports coming from our partners in communities who tried to question the irregularities but were not able pursue it for fear for their life and security and distrust from the system.

Three reports have it that they voted for their chosen candidates but receipts included the name of Bong Go which was not part of their choice. Another voted 10 candidates however, the receipt yielded only eight names while the 9th and 10th are just dots. Another received a shaded ballot already. These are just few of the reports which manifest irregularities.

We, from the Philippine Misereor Partnership, Inc. (PMPI), a network of civil society organizations, rights groups, peace and faith-based institutions joins other civil society and church groups to demand accountability and transparency from the Commission on Election (Comelec).

The people have the right to know and be clarified:

1) Why was there a lull of 7 to 9 hours in the transmission of results to the transparency server, media and watchdog groups?

2) Why is there a sizable increase in glitches in the VCM and SD cards this year compared to previous elections?

3) Why is the central server and “meet me room” set-up of Comelec kept secret?

4) Why were the depository of receipts of the casted ballots unsealed and in carton or plastic boxes only?

5) Why is there lack of information on the voting process and there was no instruction during precinct voting on the manner of voting which lead to over-voting and inability of many to vote party list groups?

Weeks before the election we are mulling over these questions:

1) Why did the Comelec refuse to allow NAMFREL to have an open access to the data and information in real time of the transmission of results?

2) Why did the Comelec declared Nacionalista Party (NP), a known ally of the majority party as the dominant minority opposition?

In the spirit of transparency and accountability, these questions need be answered by the Comelec as these paint seeming conspiracy by the Comelec to rig the election.

The inability of the Comelec to explain what cause the sudden stoppage of transmission during the actual lull is unacceptable. There was no clear and thorough explanation on the so called “java error” provided during the lull. And when it finally resumed 90% of votes have been counted! Likewise keeping secret the central server and “meet me room” is a violation of the Omnibus Election Code.

The 1,699 voting counting machines (VCM) challenged by technical glitches, out of 85,000 VCMs, and almost a thousand SD cards malfunctioned compared to 188 only inthe 2016 election reek of inefficiency and unpreparedness. Even a newbie technical person would know that a huge data flooding the transmission and server needs a backup system.

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ONE MINUTE FOR PEACE 2019

Observed next Saturday, June 8, is the fifth anniversary of the meeting, here in the Vatican, of the Presidents of Israel and of Palestine with me and with Patriarch Bartholomew. At 1:00 pm we are invited to dedicate “a minute” of prayer “for peace,” for believers; of reflection, for those that don’t believe: all together for a more fraternal world. Thanks to International Catholic Action that is promoting this initiative.
– Pope Francis – General Audience, 5th June

Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!
… Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness. Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, … and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam! Amen.
INVOCATION FOR PEACE
Words of Pope Francis – Vatican Gardens – Sunday, 8 June 2014

On June 8 at 1 p.m. by ONE MINUTE FOR PEACE 2019 we take up the appeal of the Document “Human fraternity for world peace and living together” signed  in Abu Dhabi on February 2019 by Pope Francis and by the Great Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb: “Al-Azhar and the Catholic Church ask that this Document become the object of research and reflection in all schools, universities and institutes of formation, thus helping to educate new generations to bring goodness and peace to others, and to be defenders everywhere of the rights of the oppressed and of the least of our brothers and sisters”.

We invite all people around the world: Catholics and Christians of other denominations together with believers of other religions, men and women of good will “to unite and work together so that it may serve as a guide for future generations to advance a culture of mutual respect in the awareness of the great divine grace that makes all human beings brothers and sisters”. An occasion to remember also the VIII Centenary of St Francis’ encounter with the Sultan of Egypt Al-Malik Al-Kamel.

This initiative is aimed at individuals or groups and can become an occasion for meetings on June 8, or near this date, with a special care of the media and social media.

It’s up to us! Let us involve people to spread this initiative in order to count around the world a growing number of MINUTES FOR PEACE. One Minute for Peace” was launched by the International Forum of Catholic Action (IFCA), by the Italian Catholic Action and Argentinian Catholic Action, by the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) and by others, for the first time on June 6, 2014 at 1 p.m., in support of the “Invocation for Peace” meeting, promoted by Pope Francis on June 8 in the Vatican Gardens together with the President of Israel (Simon Peres), the President of the Palestinian Authority (Maḥmūd ʿAbbās – Abu Mazen), and the Patriarch of Constantinople (Bartholomew I)

Invocation for Peace

Words of Pope Francis
Vatican Gardens
Sunday, 8 June 2014

Your Holiness,
Brothers and Sisters,

I greet you with immense joy and I wish to offer you, and the eminent delegations accompanying you, the same warm welcome which you gave to me during my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

I am profoundly grateful to you for accepting my invitation to come here and to join in imploring from God the gift of peace. It is my hope that this meeting will be a path to seeking the things that unite, so as to overcome the things that divide.

I also thank Your Holiness, my venerable Brother Bartholomaios, for joining me in welcoming these illustrious guests. Your presence here is a great gift, a much-appreciated sign of support, and a testimony to the pilgrimage which we Christians are making towards full unity.

Your presence, dear Presidents, is a great sign of brotherhood which you offer as children of Abraham. It is also a concrete expression of trust in God, the Lord of history, who today looks upon all of us as brothers and who desires to guide us in his ways.

This meeting of prayer for peace in the Holy Land, in the Middle East and in the entire world is accompanied by the prayers of countless people of different cultures, nations, languages and religions: they have prayed for this meeting and even now they are united with us in the same supplication. It is a meeting which responds to the fervent desire of all who long for peace and dream of a world in which men and women can live as brothers and sisters and no longer as adversaries and enemies.

Dear Presidents, our world is a legacy bequeathed to us from past generations, but it is also on loan to us from our children: our children who are weary, worn out by conflicts and yearning for the dawn of peace, our children who plead with us to tear down the walls of enmity and to set out on the path of dialogue and peace, so that love and friendship will prevail.

Many, all too many, of those children have been innocent victims of war and violence, saplings cut down at the height of their promise. It is our duty to ensure that their sacrifice is not in vain. The memory of these children instils in us the courage of peace, the strength to persevere undaunted in dialogue, the patience to weave, day by day, an ever more robust fabric of respectful and peaceful coexistence, for the glory of God and the good of all.

Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to conflict: yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities; yes to respect for agreements and no to acts of provocation; yes to sincerity and no to duplicity. All of this takes courage, it takes strength and tenacity.

History teaches that our own powers do not suffice. More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one, employing a variety of means, has succeeded in blocking it. That is why we are here, because we know and we believe that we need the help of God. We do not renounce our responsibilities, but we do call upon God in an act of supreme responsibility before our consciences and before our peoples. We have heard a summons, and we must respond. It is the summons to break the spiral of hatred and violence, and to break it by one word alone: the word “brother”. But to be able to utter this word we have to lift our eyes to heaven and acknowledge one another as children of one Father.

To him, the Father, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, I now turn, begging the intercession of the Virgin Mary, a daughter of the Holy Land and our Mother.

Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!

We have tried so many times and over so many years to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms. How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced; how much blood has been shed; how many lives have been shattered; how many hopes have been buried… But our efforts have been in vain.

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Why ending ‘endo’ remains as Duterte’s unmet campaign promise

Bulatlat file photoThe Congress-approved Senate version does not prohibit fixed-term and multi-layered contracting as demanded by workers. Its provision on penalties and fines on employers and agencies engaged in illegal labor-only contracting is weak.

By Marya Salamat
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — Various labor organizations, except the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), have expressed dissatisfaction with the Congress-approved Security of Tenure Bill passed a few days before the 17th Congress adjourns.All the bill awaits now is President Duterte’ signature for it to become a law.

As ending Endo is a trending campaign promise that helped Duterte secure popularity and votes in 2016, he has been asked by labor groups time and again to produce results.Endo is end of contract or the practice in which employers scrimp on wages and benefits by shuffling workers with work contracts for less than six months.

Duterte promised to end Endo in months. He delayed delivering on it by first requiring the labor groups, through Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, to unite and craft their proposed anti-endo policies and mechanisms.But Bello also took proposals from employers’ groups. He came up with Labor Department Order 174 that the labor groups rejected, saying it favored the employers more and merely “improved” the ways in which contractualization could continue.

On Labor Day 2018, Duterte signed the Executive Order (EO) 51 but labor groups, again, found that it would not end Endo because it’s still premised on the same stumbling block embodied in DO 174: it is not prohibiting but still allowing contractualization.

Labor groups Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino said the president, if he had really wanted it, is empowered by Labor Code to end Endo. The same power he and his alter ego, the Labor Secretary, uses to issue oepartment Orders regulating contractualization can just as well be used to ban it. Duterte passed the ball instead to Congress saying that prohibiting Endo requires legislation.

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SoT bill not enough to end all forms of contractualization – labor NGO

24 May 2019

A labor research group takes on a more critical stance as it welcomes the passage of Security of Tenure Bill on final reading, saying that the broad labor unity and massive nationwide protests have pushed the administration to pass the bill with stricter prohibitions on labor-only contracting.

“The passage of SoT bill is a positive step in ensuring security of tenure of our workers. We must however remain cautious as the bill still retains that there is ‘legitimate’ labor contracting in spite of the workers’ demand to end to all forms of contractualization and other forms of flexible work arrangements,” said Rochelle Porras, Executive Director of Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER).

EILER noted that Section 3 and onwards of the bill still allow outsourcing, contracting and subcontracting as a legitimate labor practice and leaves DOLE the power to regulate contractualization. Despite the prohibitions the bill was aiming to set, many enterprises can still practice labor-only contracting even if this will be regulated. As such, the bill still does not essentially prohibit widespread contractualization.

 “Any provisions allowing job contracting or subcontracting defeats the purpose of ending all forms of contractualization. There should be no loopholes in the law where enterprises can circumvent the right to security of tenure of all workers across all industries,” Porras said.

Porras emphasized that the exploitative endo or the “end of contract” scheme deprives workers of living wages, freedom of association, security of tenure and other labor rights.

She also said that DOLE is not duly ensuring that enterprises are implementing all its regularization orders in favor of the workers. DOLE and non-compliant businesses must be held accountable for union-busting and dismissal of workers due to reversal of compliance orders.

 “We call on our newly elected house representatives and senators to stand firm against pressure from business groups who are still using the rubbish excuse that we need to promote contractualization to attract foreign investors. The truth is they are protecting their primary interest, which is to reap maximum profits from labor contracting,” Porras said.

 “Listen to the demands of the workers and ultimately pass a bill that strengthens constitutional provisions on regular employment. Junk neoliberal economic policies and promote decent, regular jobs with living wages in order to effectively end all forms of contractualization,” Porras ended.

Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER)
Telefax: +63 2 433 9287 | Facebook: /eilerincph | Twitter: @eilerinc | Instagram: @eilerinc

New Evangelization Conference 2019

May 7, 2019

To: Our Friends in the Federation of National Youth Organizations:

May the Peace of Christ be with you!

Last July 9, 2012, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issued a Pastoral Letter on the Era of New Evangelization. Entitled “Live Christ, Share Christ,” it declared a 9-year novena of the Philippine Church leading to March 16, 2021, the fifth centenary of the coming of the Catholic faith in the country. This 2019, we celebrate “Filipino Youth in Mission: Beloved, Gifted, Empowered” aiming to produce youth who are committed to families, to the Church and to the country with a renewed passion to proclaim the Word, ready to work with their communities and the Church, and willing to share in molding a just and peaceful world through missionary involvement

In response to the call to new evangelization, The Live Christ, Share Christ (LCSC) intends to mainstream Catholic lay evangelization especially in this Year of the Youth.

In line with this, we are pleased to invite you to the New Evangelization Conference 2019 (NEC 2019) happening in three consecutive places: in Luzon this June 8, 2019, at the PICC Forum, Pasay City from 8AM to 5PM; Visayas on August in Bohol; and Mindanao on September in Cagayan de Oro. These are a free-admission event.

On its sixth year, we aim to gather at least 7,000 people to be part of this momentous event. There will be a Catholic Expo and Marian Exhibit, a Clarion Call competitions for band, choir, and song writing, and the annual Catholic New Evangelization Awards (CNEA). With this, we are extending this invitation to you, to participate and support this event by helping spread the word and inviting everyone to celebrate with us. Kindly register online through this link: http://tiny.cc/NEC2019

For further inquiries, please call (02) 726-7989 and look for Ms. Hope Reyes. We look forward to your favorable response. Thank you and God bless!