About 6,000 Negrenses are expected to join the nationwide September 21 “Trillion Peso March” against corruption, with a rally set in front of the Bacolod City Government Center replica at the Bacolod City Public Plaza at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
The protesters, who are urged to wear white t-shirts, will march from the South Capitol Road at 1:30 p.m. to the plaza to demand an end to corruption, Fr. Armand Onion said at a press conference on Wednesday, Sept. 17.
The protest, organized by the One Negros Ecumenical Council, calls for the jailing of those behind the theft of government funds for flood control and other projects intended for the people, Fr. Aniceto “Mao” Buenafe said.
The nationwide protest, sparked by recent allegations of anomalous flood-control projects, coincides with the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law by former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the father of the country’s current president.
The organizers of the Bacolod protest, in a manifesto calling for accountability and social change, said corruption in government has robbed the people of vital social services.
“The House of Representatives and the Senate, now acting high and mighty with sham investigations, actively build corruption-laden budgets so their pockets are lined with the people’s funds,” the manifesto said.
“It is with this concern that we, workers and peoples from different churches and civil society organizations, look upon the grave state of our nation and our people and declare our great abhorrence of this heinous and contemptible corruption that has engulfed our system of governance,” it said.
United, they call for a thorough and impartial investigation into the anomalous and corruption-laden public works, beginning with the flood control projects and continuing through all the projects where the people’s money was suspiciously allocated, the manifesto added.
“Thorough because we wish to resolve the very roots of this systemic ill and apprise the extent to which such has siphoned resources from vital social services into the pockets of our corrupt leaders,” the manifesto said.
They call on the government to swiftly let the hammer of justice fall upon these money-laundering leaders so they may be held to account for what they took, it said.
“It is not enough that we lay bare the anomalies within our system of governance. The law and justice must take its course so we may begin to rid ourselves and our government of the crooked ways of old,” the manifesto said.
It called on the Filipino people to unite and join the march on Sunday to begin the process of genuine social transformation and an end to corruption.*
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