Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino
Press Statement
SOLIDARITY WITH THE 11,000 DISPLACED WORKERS OF ABS-CBN
The BMP expresses solidarity with the 11,000 displaced workers of ABS-CBN, who are victims to the infighting of the elite - Duterte and the Lopezes - not just for political but for economic interests.
Eleven thousand working class families were driven to starvation and uncertainty, in a time of pandemic, with an incompetent government that could not provide for the basic needs of a hungry and quarantined population. The BMP stands in solidarity with the thousands of ABS-CBN workers and their families. You are kapamilya. We are kauri.
Much has been said about the obvious. The failure of Congress to renew the ABS-CBN franchise was clearly driven by political motives. It is an attempt by the dominant faction of the elite to forcefully control the country’s largest media outfit, an institution that has influenced electoral politics in the country in the post-EDSA 1986 period.
Duterte and his gang clearly has an aversion to the prim-and-proper rules of liberal bourgeois democracy. The attack on the Lopezes is a signal to all private media outfits to toe the line of the administration, in this sense, it is an offensive against so-called press freedom.
The shrewd politician in Rodrigo Duterte knows that the chances of his faction to remain in power lies in the maintaining the illusion that they created in the 2016 elections. The previously uncontested popularity of Duterte has waned due to his too blatant display of incompetence and stupidity in the government response to the COVID19 pandemic.
Other than naked political contest, what drives this attack on the Lopezes is unashamed economic gain. Despite the lockdown, which has halted nearly all economic activity aside from consumption, advertising money kept pouring in to the Lopezes and ABS-CBN.
Driven by greed and envy, the ruling elite faction pushed to through with their plans against the renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise - without care or regard to the need to keep the public informed as we face the COVID19 global health crisis. Cronies will now play highest bidder on who would take over the market space that was left by the Lopezes.
This heightened appetite of the Duterte faction for plunder and absolute power, even with a ravaging pandemic, also points to one thing. Time is almost up and it would cash in on anything and everything; unfortunately for the Filipino people that includes the trillions for the COVID19 response, in the form of collected taxes, of discretionary budget to the executive, and of grants and loans from financial institutions.#
