It’s peach vs Noy’s yellow ribbons

MANILA, Philippines - In response to President Aquino’s call for the people to openly show their support for his leadership by displaying the color yellow, militant group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) yesterday launched a “peach ribbon” campaign to drum up support for impeachment moves against the Chief Executive.

“Peach is the color of the time. Yellow ribbons nowadays will be irrelevant, unnecessary and powerless as the color yellow has been proven to bring forth economic hardships to the people and has been used to defend and justify measures raiding the people’s money through the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and various pork barrel mechanisms in the government,” Bayan said.

Aside from wearing peach colored shirts, people dissatisfied with Aquino may tie peach-colored ribbons outside their houses, schools and workplaces to show their support for impeachment moves against the President.

Bayan also urged netizens to use peach ribbon symbols as their profile pictures on social networking sites.

The yellow magic, Bayan said, has long faded as shown by the continuing decline in Aquino’s performance and popularity ratings.  

“A president who made Yolanda victims wait for four months before admitting fault for the delay in relief and assistance deserves to be impeached,” Bayan said in a statement. “A president who refused to show remorse or regret for implementing an unconstitutional pork program must be held accountable.”

Bayan vowed to launch more protests ahead of the fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) of Aquino on July 28.

Meanwhile, in Baguio City, indigenous groups said President Aquino is becoming a dictator.

“Aquino has the makings of a dictator,” Piya Macliing Malayao, spokesperson for the Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP) said.

“Aquino is acting in the fashion of his kind: an arrogant, despotic, aristocratic landlord whose orders can never be deemed wrong or unfair. Ang utos ng hari, kahit mali, hindi mababali (The king’s order even if wrong can never be broken),” she said.

She said Aquino showed his “dictatorial character” by undermining the power of Congress to allocate public funds, disrespecting the power of the judiciary to interpret the law and continuing to betray the public trust and his sworn duty to protect and obey the Constitution.

“Aquino and his clique rules in the manner of despots, warranting authoritative bureaucratic corruption, and defending their actions as if no higher law than themselves exist,” she said.

“Formerly, it was Ferdinand Marcos who was described as such, it is ironic that Aquino himself is traipsing along that route,” Malayao added.

“Never in the history of the Philippines had a President expressly defied the decisions of the Supreme Court, and reject its judgment utterly. There is no greater height of arrogance,” she said.  

“He claims that 13 magistrates overlooked a very important piece in our Constitution, and boosts his own claim of mastery of our laws. Yet in truth, he wants to place himself beyond the reaches of our laws, and absolve himself of any accountability,” she added.

“The Filipino people do not need another dictator. Aquino should especially know that the Filipino people are able to remove the despots and the tyrants from Malacañang.”

Also in Baguio City, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV said the administration should hasten its filing of an appeal against the SC ruling on DAP instead of pursuing a “yellow shirt” tactic.

“Walang ibig sabihin ang T-shirt (T-shirts are meaningless),” he said. –With Artemio Dumlao