MIGRANTE International
Press Statement
06 March 2023
Migrante-International vehemently opposes the Charter Change scheme being pushed by the Bongbong Marcos regime through its allies in Congress and the Senate. We condemn legislators’ efforts to railroad Cha-cha and ram it down the throats of the Filipino people. We vow to hold and join protests against this scheme.
Pushing for Marcos’ Cha-cha is a self-serving move for the country’s politicians: it will reward them with bribe money, allow them to extend their term limits, and provide them with an alibi for not doing their real mandate of creating laws for the people.
More importantly, Marcos’ Cha-cha will accelerate the country’s decline along the direction currently pursued by the country’s elites who are subservient to foreign powers — greater foreign and elite control over the economy, more authoritarian rule, and blatant puppetry to superpowers in their increasingly hostile geopolitical rivalry.
This direction is responsible for the forced migration of millions of Filipinos to find work abroad. It has contributed to the economy’s dependence on migrants’ remittances, which is incapable of developing the country. It is responsible for the brain drain, where Filipinos’ knowledge and skills benefit other countries, not the Philippines.
The 1987 Constitution was created right after the 1986 Edsa People Power uprising, which ousted the US-backed Marcos dictatorship and in which the nationalist and progressive movements in the country played an undeniably pivotal part. It contains provisions that create hindrances to the worst schemes of the country’s elites.
>> Further opening the country’s economy to foreign ownership and control will worsen the exploitation of our people and the environment without creating a sustainable and pro-people economy capable of developing the industrial and agricultural sectors to create decent jobs in the country.
>> Removing restrictions to the declaration of martial law and to outright authoritarian rule, as well as removing provisions about people’s freedoms and human rights, will only stifle dissent and maintain elite rule that is responsible for the mess that the country currently finds itself in.
>> Amending provisions about declaring war, entering into foreign military agreements, allowing foreign military bases in Philippine soil, and allowing the nuclear and other weapons into the country’s territory will play into the demands of superpowers currently engaged in an increasingly hostile rivalry.
Changing the 1987 Constitution is part of the Marcos family’s brutal vendetta against the Edsa People Power uprising, its unsparing historical revisionism, and its disgusting nostalgia for the cronyist, kleptocratic, fascist and anti-development rule of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Migrante-International calls on all migrant Filipinos and all Filipinos to condemn, oppose, protest and frustrate the Marcos regime’s Cha-cha. ###
