Media Release

Filipino-Canadians and their supporters unite in forum to call for ouster of Philippine President Arroyo

June 30, 2005

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- With massive protests heating up in the Philippines and with the hastened departure of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's husband Jose Miguel, the community of progressive overseas Filipinos in Canada reiterated their call for unity to support Arroyo's ouster.

Around 40 Filipinos and Canadian supporters gathered at the Kalayaan Centre in downtown Vancouver last night to listen to updates on the "Gloria-gate" scandal and to discuss what they can do to support the Filipino people's call to oust Arroyo as she recently admitted it was her voice on the tapes which implicate she cheated in the last presidential elections.

"As a community of Filipinos whose patriotic sentiment still lies in our homeland and who are abroad because of the rottenness of the Philippine system could not provide us meaningful work, we need to...build unity...to call for the ouster of Arroyo," said May Farrales, member of the BC Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines in a presentation at the forum. "Cheating in a presidential election is not a minor mistake," said Farrales, "it is a serious crime."

Glecy Duran, of SIKLAB (or "Flameburst" whose acronym translates to, "Advance and Uphold the Rights of Overseas Filipino Workers") shared her experience in a recent trip to the Philippines where she visited the picketline of workers from Hacienda Luisita, seven of whom were massacred when the military and police opened fire on the strikers and their supporters.

"The striking workers were only asking for a meager increase in their wages," said Duran. "But their strike was declared illegal by the government and they were met with violence."

Hacienda Luisita is a sprawling sugarcane plantation in Tarlac province owned by the Cojuangco family of former President Corazon Aquino.

Duran also shared her own experience as a former domestic worker who came to Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).

"Migrant workers in Canada face all kinds of abuse from their employers," said Duran. "We are the milking cows of Arroyo since it is our remittances which prop up her ailing economy," she added. "Yet her government does not protect us from abuse and simply neglects us," said Duran.

In an open forum, various sectors in the Filipino community reiterated their outrage and disgust with the current situation in the Philippines under Arroyo. They compared their experiences as, "Marcos -babies" and "Marcos-men" (referring to those who were born and lived in the Philippines under the rule of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, between 1966 and 1986) to the current situation saying that today's situation was similar if not worse to the time of martial law under Marcos.

Participants discussed the creative ways in which the Filipino people are disseminating information about the "Gloria-gate" scandal. They listened to some of the cellphone ringtones which feature excerpts from the taped conversation Arroyo had with an election commissioner about fixing the election results.

Participants also called on Canada to withdraw its support to the Arroyo regime and for Canadians to support the Filipino's call for the ouster of Arroyo. They vowed to heighten their actions in the next few months to push for Arroyo's ouster and supported the call of BAYAN for a democratic coalition government.

- 30 -