Responsibility for the escalating armed conflict in Mindanao should be laid squarely on the US-backed Arroyo regime. Through its self-serving and deceitful maneuvers, the Arroyo regime has severely damaged the peace process, provoked armed confrontation, and allowed escalating foreign intervention in the country’s internal affairs including armed conflicts.

By Carlos H. Conde
Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project
Given that Arroyo doesn’t have any remaining political capital to work with, the MILF should probably think about suspending negotiations with the government. If the MILF plays its cards well and controls its troops -– it bears repeating that the MILF gains nothing from attacking civilians — the burden of stilling the guns and keeping the peace in Mindanao lies with Arroyo.

Heto pa ang isang nanggagago.
In her State of the Nation Address on Monday, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo boasted that text messaging in the Philippines now costs only 50 centavos each message sent. She said this was her government’s response to the clamor by poor Filipinos to reduce prices — and text messaging being popular among the [...]

Pulling a 21-foot effigy of a sinking ship, members of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan marched from Tandang Sora Avenue to just beyond EVER Commonwealth to join other anti-Arroyo groups in a “People’s SONA”. The counter-SONA described the state of the nation as “a sinking ship with the captain even robbing its passengers”.

The reported trip of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the United States to meet with US president George W. Bush and presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama will mark another low point in RP-US relations, according to the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan.
“It will be an extravaganza of terror and economic plunder, the two [...]

MANILA, Philippines — It will be a meeting of two of the most unpopular presidents in their respective countries, a summit between a colonial master and a puppet.
These were the words used by the umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan to describe the reported meeting between United States George W. Bush and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal [...]

Statement of the President, 26 May 2008
The non-stop increase in oil prices and the unprecedented food price shock now roiling the world are adversely affecting household incomes and forcing families to cut back on spending, if not do away altogether with certain necessities.
At an average of P450 per unit, parents are spending about P10,000 for [...]

KMU chairman Elmer Labog, in a statement, said the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was responsible for the deteriorating health of AnakPawis Rep. Crispin Beltran, which may have been a factor in the accident that led to his death. “It cannot be denied that the arrest and detention of Ka Bel at Camp Crame and Philippine Heart Center last 2006 due to fabricated cases of rebellion was a cause for his physical deterioration,” Labog said. (Click here to read the statements and tributes to Ka Bel.)

House Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Satur C. Ocampo today condemned the killing of an official of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas on Thursday in Davao City and blamed it on President Macapagal-Arroyo’s order to carry on counter-insurgency program Oplan Bantay Laya 2 that includes extra-judicial killings.
The KMP identified the victim as [...]

Among the recommendations put forth at the UNHRC’s review of human rights in the Philippines is the intensification of efforts to investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of extrajudicial killings.

ZTE-NBN scandal whistleblower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada says he has paid the price for telling the Filipino people what they already know “and yet do not want to be told.”

Various anti-Arroyo groups will come together in protest once again, but this time, the focus will be the economy.
Groups aligned with the United Opposition (UNO), the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), Edsa 3 Coalition, Laban ng Masa, the Be not Afraid Movement and other Opposition forces will converge at Plaza Miranda in Manila at 4:00 pm [...]

House Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur C. Ocampo today warned President Macapagal-Arroyo that her government’s failure to effectively address the rice crisis because of her wrong food security policy adds ground to the people’s mounting calls for her ouster.
“The Filipino people are getting fed up and now begin to understand that Ms [...]

MIGRANTE-Japan condemns the gruesome murder of Honiefaith Ratilla Kamiosawa, a 22-year old Filipina whose body was found mutilated in an apartment located in Tokyo’s Minato district on April 4, 2008. We demand that justice be served for the victim and her family.
Only recently, another Filipina was murdered by her Japanese husband along with the couple’s [...]

Bayan expects the crisis to worsen and oil and rice prices to increase as the government continues to implement the same flawed policies that helped worsen the crisis.

The Philippine human rights alliance Karapatan today said that window dressing cannot hide the stench of the Arroyo regime’s bloody human rights record. They also said that “Mrs. Arroyo and Gen. Ermita will not be happy for long because the world knows that justice has not been served and that the killings and disappearances [...]

Small coconut farmers today lambasted President Gloria Arroyo’s pronouncement that the coco levy funds could be used to finance the administration’s proposed diesel coupon scheme.
Jun Adorable of the Alyansa ng mga Maglulubi sa Mindanaw (AM-Mindanaw) and the Mindanao Rural Congress (MRC) decried that, “President Gloria Arroyo talks as if she owns the coco levy funds [...]

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Q. Pimentel,
Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said “it may be difficult but
not impossible” to convince the Supreme Court to
reverse its ruling on the Neri case which he branded
as a “grave mistake.”
Pimentel said the high court’s ruling on the case was
based on a number of erroneous premises as he
expressed the hope that the [...]

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Q. Pimentel,
Jr. (PDP-Laban) today questioned President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo’s veto of section 97 of the general
provisions of the GAA which states that the P1.227
trillion national budget shall take effect on Jan. 1,
2008 although she signed the GAA only on March 11.
Instead of following the congressional intent for a
retroactive application of the GAA, [...]

An immediate price cap on rice to avoid spiraling market prices
together with medium and long term policies to develop the domestic
rice industry will bring us out of the current crisis in rice supply
and prices, said the scientists group AGHAM in a statement today.
“The current crisis is a result of GMA’s policies that prefers imports
in addressing [...]