CEBU PROVINCE – The Cebu Coalition Against the Pork Barrel System has urged all Cebuanos to join a massive interfaith rally on Sunday.
Organizers said participants will assemble at the Fuente Osmeña circle at 1 p.m. followed by a march down Osmeña Boulevard toward Plaza Independencia where a Mass will be concelebrated and an interfaith prayer and anti-pork barrel program will be held.
It said over 50 religious, civil society and academic, including business organizations have coalesced to form this protest event against the “pork barrel system.”
Heads of Cebu schools such as University of Cebu, Cebu Doctors University, University of San Carlos, University of the Visayas, St. Theresa’s College, and other Catholic schools will encourage their students and faculty to join the September 29 protest activities, it added.
The rally will also include leaders of different faiths praying for the well-being of the country by getting rid of the pork barrel system, patronage politics and corruption in general.
Several individuals from various sectors of society will speak up and share with others how the pork barrel scam has negatively affected their lives.
Organizers said guest performers, among them Budoy and the Sining Dilaab Tribal Progressive Band will also perform to entertain the crowd. In addition, Ingko Alisyon (in coalition), will help inform and regale the crowd with very educational, yet simple parables and make this complex national tragedy much easier to understand.
The program also includes the reading of the Unity Statement in English and Cebuano, signing of the statement throughout the event, and special candle lighting called “Ten Thousand Points of Light.”
If there is one thing that differentiates this rally among others locally or nationally, it is that a major focus of this event includes proposing potential alternatives or solutions to the pork barrel. These options will be introduced to the crowd and their collective response noted.
Right after the rally in the beginning of October, the Coalition has planned two educational fora highlighting constitutional and governance experts who will serve as resources regarding the potential solutions that had introduced to the participants.
In fact, on September 25, the Movement for a Liveable Cebu, a member of the Coalition conducted an education forum with Justice Gabriel Ingles on “The General Appropriations Ac.t” Following these educational sessions, core members of the Coalition will engage in a two day retreat – October 5 and 6 – to further work on the specific proposals for alternatives and solutions.
Msgr. Rommel Kintanar of the Archdiocesan Discernment Group of Cebu and Co-Convenor, said: “We will not only say why we are against the pork barrel system, we will explain fully what we have stated in our Unity Statement, and most importantly, we will float some of our potential solutions and alternatives.”
“We appeal to people with good hearts and clean conscience, especially Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) beneficiaries who would be painfully affected by PDAF abolition: May they understand the gravity and urgency of this radical solution. May they bear and see this temporary sacrifice as the birth pangs for the emergence of a better way of managing government resources and of improving the delivery of government services.”
The sense of transformation is vividly present within the group. There is impatience with the way politics has been conducted in the country and how such politics has caused so much suffering for people especially the marginalized.
“We ache for a country where we count the number of Nobel Prize winners and Magsaysay Awardees, as opposed to how many plunderers have been convicted and put in jail,” said Marc Canton, of the Movement for a Liveable Cebu and Coalition co-convenor.
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