BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
ILOILO City – For heckling President Benigno Aquino III while delivering a speech here, two militant youth leaders of Anakbayan-Panay were charged with “alarm and scandal”.
The President was delivering a speech at the Iloilo Esplanade on June 27 when Bryan Bosque and Krisma Porquia and two others from the League of Filipino Students (LFS) hollered, “Noynoy Aquino, tuta, pasista, pahirap sa masa! Patalsikin (US bootlicker, fascist, yoke of the poor! Oust him)!”
“We brand these actions as desperate and repressive,” said Bosque, also the Anakbayan vice president for Visayas.
The right to freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed by the Constitution, he stressed.
The Aquino administration is becoming desperate to stop public criticisms against its policies and governance, Bosque added.
He saw “nothing alarming and scandalous” in the exercise of the constitutional right to free speech and expression.
“What we expressed were legitimate issues and concerns of the people and the youth,” Bosque said.
He considered the charge that the Mandurriao police station filed as part of the government’s systematic attack on human rights, citing the killing of pro-farmer businessman Romeo Capalla (March) in Oton, Iloilo; filing of charges against eight “mass leaders” in Aklan (April); killing of farmer Dionisio Garete (May) in Janiuay, Iloilo; and ransacking of the office of the non-government organization Panay Center for Disaster Response (June).
Bosque sees the trend to continue. He cited for instance the filing of cases “tumult and other disturbance of public order” and “direct assault” to a youth leader, Em Mijares who heckled the President in Naga City on June 12./PN
