Piercing Pens

By Yolly Ong

Like the rest of the ABC+ ECO classes, I figured we should just ignore GMA and go about our life. After all there’s no acceptable alternative on the horizon. Better the devil we know than the one we don’t, right?

I even said she was most likely the real winner in the 2004 elections. After all she had the incumbent’s advantage. She spent billions of pesos for her campaign. The P800M fertilizer fund and P500M health insurance budgets were diverted to buy votes. Then to ensure a convincing victory she topped it off with Garci. You see the little woman vowed she would get a lead of at least 1M votes over FPJ. That way, even if Opposition cheats, she would have a buffer. Her other ambition was to get more votes than Erap, partly to thumb her nose up at him and his loyalists. Mostly so she would feel the love of the people because in truth everything she did was really for love. (more…)

Here are some Gloria Dolls stolen from Ellen Tordesilla’s blog:

Two House bills that seek to repeal Batas Pambansa 880–which was used to justify the arrest of Dinky Soliman and Enteng Romano yesterday–have already been approved by the House of Representatives Committee on Human Rights: Bayan Muna’s House Bill 1555 and Akbayan’s House Bill 4802.

HB 1555, or the proposed The Freedom of Expression Act of 2004 by Rep. Satur Ocampo and other Bayan Muna Representatives, provides for the following:

a) no permit requirement for the holding of a public assembly;
b) non-interference from law enforcement authorities during public assemblies;
c) extension of police assistance when requested;
d) no dispersal of public assembly; and
e) immunity from arrest and taxation. (more…)

Police arrested this afternoon former Social Welfare Sec. Dinky Soliman, one of the leaders of the anti-Arroyo Black and White Movement, according to GMA-7’s 24 Oras.

Soliman was arrested with eLagda leader Vicente Romano III, and other supporters of Black and White Movement. The group held the weekly flash protest at Baywalk today.

Mindanews’s Patricio Diaz in his column “Comment” expressed what I’ve been thinking for some time now:

“[Congress] should have amended or repealed the martial-law presidential decrees which are now being partly invoked to legalize the suppression of the freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of peaceable assembly.

“For instance, PD 880 is still operative. It’s basically the basis of the ‘Calibrated Preemptive Response’ that suppresses the freedom of peaceable assembly. ” (more…)