A LEARNING experience or a means to distract the international community from alleged state-led human rights violation.
This was how labor groups viewed President Duterte’s participation in the Democracy Summit hosted by the United States government on December 9 and 10, 2021.
In a virtual forum on Wednesday, Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) general secretary Annie E. Geron said she hopes the event will allow other countries to “teach” Duterte on how to implement “democracy.”
“It is no secret to them what kind of leadership Duterte has and what the situation is being faced by Filipino. So I hope they will be able to teach him,” Geron said.
The US government invited 110 countries, including the Philippines, to participate in the event.
Nagkaisa labor coalition chair and Federation of Free Workers (FFW) president Sonny Matula adopted an optimistic view on the effect of the summit on Duterte.
“He still has some remaining months left before the 2022 elections. We hope he will ensure the 2022 polls will not be ‘bastardized’ and he will leave a clean democratic exercise,” Matula said.
Smokescreen
KILUSANG Mayo Uno (KMU) chair Elmer Labog sees Duterte’s participation in the Democracy Summit serves as a “smokescreen” to hide the supposed prevalence of human rights violations committed by the government.
“If there is really democracy in the Philippines, they should stop the implementation of the anti-terrorism law and the harassment of the NTF-ELCAC [National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict] to legitimate expression of dissent in the country,” Labog said.
Sentro ng Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro) deputy secretary general Nice Coronacion echoed Labog’s sentiment on how Duterte is allegedly using the summit as a pretense that his administration still respects democratic processes.
“In fact,” Coronacion said, they are holding a press conference and will hold a global day for action “because of the worsening red tagging and trade union killing.”
“If there is anything participants [of summit] will learn from him, it is how not to become democratic,” she added.
Global action
PSLINK, FFW, KMU, Sentro and other members of the Council of Global Unions-Philippines (CGU) are set to conduct a Global Day of Action on Friday in Quezon City to condemn the alleged trade union killings and red-tagging in the country.
CGU noted that since 2019,
it was able to document 7 killings of trade unionists, 16 cases of arrests and detention, 12 cases of forced disaffiliation and other state interference with the right to self-organization through threats, harassment and intimidation and 17 cases of red-tagging/terrorist-tagging/intimidation/harassment.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) earlier said some of the cases are undergoing verification and being investigated by concerned authorities.
CGU expressed dismay over the pace of the probe and demanded a more definite timeline on the resolution of the labor-related cases. It also wants stronger tripartite monitoring of such labor-related abuses as well as the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC.