EDITORIAL

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Bonifacio must be tumbling in his grave

TODAY is the 153rd birth anniversary of Andres Bonifacio. The nation is remembering the Great Plebian in these interesting times. The commemoration coincides with the growing protest over the sneaky burial and hero’s honor given by the Duterte administration to former dictator and US lapdog, Ferdinand Marcos.

Doesn’t President Duterte contradict himself by taking an anti-US stance but giving a hero’s burial to a US stooge? The US coddled Marcos and tolerated his oppressive and corrupt martial law for years but dropped him like a hot potato only when it became apparent that Marcos was no longer useful to American interests.

The President cannot invoke law by his defense of the Marcos burial. He should instead emulate Bonifacio who fought foreign oppressors (the Spanish colonizers) and not Marcos who kowtowed to his US masters and used martial law.

Instead of rehabilitating the image of a disgraced US puppet, it would do well for the government to keep its promise of ending contractualization and stop its dalliances with the Marcoses. It was Marcos who legalized contractualization, banned workers’ strikes, repressed labor unions, and jailed and killed workers and union leaders. This Marcosian legacy continues to haunt the present. If he were alive today, plebian hero Bonifacio would be terribly disappointed or perhaps would be leading another revolution.

Rather than decisively junking this anti-worker scheme, Labor secretary Silvestre Bello has made one excuse after another to justify the continuation of contractualization. He is peddling “middle ground” and “win-win solution” as pretexts to allow big capitalists to continue subjecting workers to contractualization.

Contractualization has affected young workers and new graduates the most. They are placed under constant fear of losing their jobs, are prevented from acquiring overtime pay 13th month pay and other financial benefits, and stopped from forming and joining unions to further their rights. Bonifacio must be tumbling in his grave!

A real man of the masa, Bonifacio died for revolutionary freedom and democracy. The President, who considers himself a “Leftist” and projects an image of belonging or pertaining to the common people, is tainting the revolutionary ideals and heroism of Bonifacio.
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