KMU tags Noli as bootlicking anti-poor bureaucrat

Three days after he typecast the urban poor protesters as lazybones, the militant organized labor led by Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) yesterday turned the tables on Vice President Noli de Castro, branding him as an anti-poor bureaucrat “bootlicking for the Arroyo government” and vowed to campaign against him in the forthcoming elections.

In a statement, KMU chairman Elmer Labog said the organized labor was shocked to find out that De Castro had deemed picket-protests as “personal offenses to public officials.” He went on to lecture the Vice President about the need to air the people’s grievances “that the government should address.”

The KMU issued the statement after De Castro stood pat on his earlier stance that he would not extend a whiff of an apology to protesters who disrupted his speech during the celebration of Bañamos festival in Los Baños, Laguna last Thursday. The protesters, led by Kalipunang Damayan ng Mahihirap (Kadamay) – Southern Tagalog staged a lightning protest rally, chanting “Yes to free housing; No to commercialized housing program,” and “Noli, the poor man’s scourge.”

The rally irked de Castro no less. He tagged the protesters as lazybones.

Not content with the insults he hurled against the protesters, de Castro followed this issue up in his Saturday’s radio program Para sa Iyo, Bayan over dzMM, wherein he said in the vernacular: “It’s they who should apologize for being rude to me. I didn’t drive for two-and-one-half hours to Los Ba?os to be insulted.”

But the KMU would not let this pass. Labog said: “He (de Castro) complains that he drove for 2.5 hours to Los Baños only to be ‘insulted.’ First, was it he who drove the car he was riding? TV footages of his visit show he had a chauffer when he was leaving the place. He is leading a very comfortable life, he shouldn’t speak as if going to a nearby province is an ordeal.

“And he says the urban poor are lazy? During elections, Noli projects himself to have come from the ranks of the poor and to be a man of the poor, but now, he is infected with the ugly anti-masa bias of the elite. Given the lack of employment opportunities in our country – thanks to governments like the one de Castro is serving – it is the poor who work doubly hard just to make ends meet. They are not lazy. They try and the system fails them. That’s why de Castro shouldn’t just demolish homes or evict residents when they are unable to pay loans to the government. It is blind bureaucrats, not leaders, who think that way.”

The KMU statement continued:

“God save the Philippines from people like Noli de Castro. His unmasking as anti-poor shows just how bootlicking for the Arroyo regime can change people who are otherwise nice and decent. He doesn’t want to say sorry? Well, sorry na lang siya (he should feel sorry for himself). We will not forget the views he has expressed. We vow to continue exposing his anti-poor record among our kababayans and to actively campaign against him this elections, whether he runs for president, vice-president or senator.”

Last Thursday, de Castro was guest speaker at the Banamos festival wherein he was also scheduled to award land titles to beneficiaries of the government’s housing program on Thursday. The Kadamay militants took the occasion to express their concern about the consequences of evicting tens of thousand informal dwellers along the 423-km railway line from Calamba, Laguna to Legazpi City in Albay.

De Castro seemed to ignore the protest but as he continued with his speech, he twitted the rallyists as “kulang sa pansin (lacking attention).” Then he mentioned about the inability of some government housing program beneficiaries to pay their amortization.

Asked by reporters on what he thought why beneficiaries failed to meet their housing loan obligations, de Castro described them as lazy and vowed to collect from them. “Baka mga tamad sila. Sabihin niyo sa kanila, mga tamad sila. Hindi sila puwedeng hindi magbabayad. Sisingilin ko sila. Paaalisin ko kapag hindi nagbayad kahit sino pa kayo,” he said.

And in his radio program, de Castro asked Kadamay protesters to apologize to him for the insults that they hurled against him. He even bragged that he would go after those people who abused government housing programs.

De Castro’s seemingly arrogant posture thus signalled the KMU to join the fray, throwing its support behind the Kadamay protesters.

“How low can you go? Why threaten the urban poor with eviction? Such a threat can only show how insensitive Kabayan is when it comes to the plight of our urban poor kababayans,” said Labog. Kabayan, a slang for compatriot, is de Castro’s moniker. –Daily Tribune