10 May 2010

‘Clean-up streets then environment'- Green groups to all who ran for office

The Filipinos witnessed and observed the voting system to be a messy and chaotic affair, consistent with the whole 2010 elections being anything but clean, physically and figuratively. While the election brouhaha may be over, the country still has a lot of subsequent events and issues to contend with. One is the issue related to election fraud, malfunction and violence of which the current Arroyo regime and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) need to be accounted for.

In this entire affair, the environmental agenda has taken a back seat and we are now confronted, with heaps of garbage and election-related junk as reminders, to attend to the cleanliness and integrity, not only of our polls but also of our streets and communities. With this, progressive environmental groups challenges those who ran for office, winners or not, to heed the call for a clean and healthy environment.

The first urgent challenge is to clean up the streets and properly dispose of the campaign and election-related materials. How well their perform this task is an indicator of how well will they address other environmental issues.

The second is for the new administration of Noynoy Aquino to adopt a genuine pro-people and pro-environment platform that will wisely use our country's resources for genuine development, ecological conservation and national progress. This entails the scrapping of current policies that facilitate plunder and sell-out of our patrimony such as the Mining Act of 1995 and Japan Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement. Another is to prosecute and hold accountable the Arroyo regime, its cohorts and big business that benefitted from environmental crimes and human rights violations. One more requisite is a strong political will to implement effective policies and actions addressing the country's top environmental concerns such as climate change, forest degradation, disaster preparedness, flooding and poverty.

To satisfy these demands and call would be an indicator if an official truly serves the interests of the people. These first few months are crucial and Filipinos must be vigilant and insistent that those we elected perform their duties and vows well.

We must reduce the corrupt practices and leaders in our government, reuse and institute effective strategies in our struggle for the environment and ensure not to recycle the environmentally destructive policies of the Arroyo regime.