Hits state abandonment on education, unemployment, blatant corruption

Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino announced today that he will join other progressive party-list solons in boycotting Gloria Arroyo’s ninth State of the Nation Address on July 27, saying that Arroyo will only deliver a speech “glittered with grandiose rhetoric and numerous promises.”

“We expect that PGMA will boast of her administration’s legacy in her last SONA. However, we do not need the President to tell us that wha her administration has given us is a legacy of abandonment. With the dwindling state subsidy on education and growing figures of unemployment, Arroyo’s eight long years in power have given the youth nothing but a bleak future,” Palatino said.

Palatino, who will have the chance to hear Arroyo’s SONA for the first time as a solon, said, “Through Arroyo’s policies of deregulation and privatization, state colleges and universities have incessantlyimplemented tuition hikes, denying deserving and poor youth their right to education. The huge drop-out rate and number of out-of-school youth indicate the President’s inability to institute badly-needed reforms on the education sector.”

Moreover, Palatino hit the government’s “skewed education framework,”which focuses on peddling its graduates abroad and priotizing marketable courses that adhere to the demands of foreign corporations.

“Indeed, this President has created jobs. However, these are jobs that have no security, jobs that give insufficient pay, and jobs that will send Filipinos away from their families. It is important to note thatthe youth comprise 80 percent of the huge army of unemployed workers in this country. Therefore, it is only fitting that the President is made to answer all these inutilities and inaction,” Palatino said.

The young solon also criticized Arroyo’s involvement in various corruption and bribery scandals, “These have done nothing but display the Arroyo administration’s lack of moral ascendancy in imposing sanctions to corrupt wrongdoers. The Arroyo administration has survived this long precisely for its dependence on treachery and syndicate-like tactics. This government is clearly being run by an administration of bribes, betrayal and blatant corruption,” Palatino said.

Palatino also announced that he will join the series of protests scheduled before SONA. On July 24, youth and student groups will walk out of classes and assemble at Liwasang Bonifacio, 4 pm, for an anti-Chacha program and at Liwasang Bonifacio, 6 pm, for a pre-SONA concert.

“We do not expect the President to report the real state of the nation on July 27. Thus, the youth will join other sectors of society in condemning this regime outside the halls of Batasan, Palatino added.