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Join the women’s call to oust Gloria-Macapagal-Arroyo, now!

The House of Representatives has just succeeded in slaughtering the impeachment complaint on September 6, 2005 by a vote of 158:51. Innabuyog-Gabriela hails the 51 members of the House of Representatives who voted against the report of the Committee on Justice which dismissed the impeachment complaint, one among them Rep. Liza Largoza-Maza of the Gabriela Women’s Partylist.

The 51 stood by the will and dignity of the Filipino people. May their tribe increase. The 158 stood by the will of Malacanang. They ought to be doomed. They are a shame to Filipino dignity. How can they sacrifice national interest for their own vested interest? We have witnessed how Congress upheld itself as an instrument of Malacanang and of the ruling elite, and not as the voice of the Filipino majority. Millions of Filipinos watched the impeachment process and were ired at how the process was manipulated to uphold GMA and clear her of the impeachment charges. With what we witnessed, we are more convinced that any impeachment process can easily be derailed by Malacanang to ensure GMA’s continued stay. We have no other recourse but People Power—pour out in the streets and in public gatherings in our numbers to demand the ouster of GMA. We will not bow to the threats of GMA supporters accusing us of engaging in extra-constitutional means. We assert that people power is a legitimate action, having proven the inutility of legal processes.

How can we stomach a fake woman president who amid the ire and poverty of Filipinos punches us with anti-people and anti-woman measures? Instead of providing the much-needed economic relief to poor Filipinos who have no more peso to stretch and no more belt to tighten, GMA has ordered the lifting of the Temporary Restraining Order of the Expanded-Value Added Tax (E-VAT). Filipino consumers, especially the women are already over-burdened to take another increase on consumer goods and services due to the 20% E-VAT. This will squeeze us more of our remaining centavos. For us, this means more hunger, humiliation and oppression.

GMA has remained deaf to our strong calls to scrap the Oil Deregulation Law which is the root of the incessant price increases of oil products. Households are squeezed of their small budget for food every time there is a hike in the price of oil products. Small driver-operators can no longer raise the needed income for their families given the high cost of oil.

Households of poor women in Baguio and in the Cordillera can no longer take these impoverishing measures of the GMA government. We cannot starve more, GMA has to go. It is our collective actions and our growing number that we will succeed in forcing GMA out of Malacanang and let the process of new governance begin through a transition council composed of all the groups which worked hard to expel GMA out of Malacanang.

We are starving, we cannot starve more. We cannot afford to let GMA stay longer in power.
Women, Unite! Demand GMA to step down now!
Roll back the prices of oil products! Scrap the Oil Deregulation Law!
Junk the E-VAT Law and Oppose all new Tax Measures! #

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