Here are my prepared remarks and presentation for the meeting of the House Committee on Information and Communication Technology, held on May 20, 2015:

Honorable chair and members, good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to attend and speak at this meeting.

All the measures now being heard in this meeting deserve hearing, study, and approval by the committee, by the House and by the whole Congress:

  • House Resolution 186 of Congressman Arnel Ty;
  • House Resolution 630 of Congressman Terry Ridon;
  • House Resolution 1012 of Congressmen Neri Javier Colmenares and Carlos Isagani Zarate;
  • House Bill 2794 of Congressman Anthony Bravo and Cresente Paez; and
  • House Bill 5331 of Congressman Winnie Castelo.

Individually and collectively, these measures tell the sad or anger-inducing or patience-snapping stories of many students, parents, workers, farmers, professionals, entrepreneurs, businessmen, or congressmen. If there’s one thing aside from terrible traffic that we all suffer from together, it is the dismal state of internet and telephony services in the country. No one is spared from these horrors that should be preventable and easy to solve. 

Most of us have slippers, some even have more than one pair. They are mainstays in our homes. We wear them all year round, and we bring them when going out on vacation, here or abroad. Going to the beach or the provinces this summer is incomplete without our favorite slippers or flip-flops.

But we never imagined that making some of those slippers could be this deadly to workers.

72 people who worked for outrageously-low wages for slipper-maker Kentex Manufacturing Inc. died this week in a fire that gutted down the company factory in Barangay Ugong, Valenzuela City.

The execution was stopped and Mary Jane Veloso is alive today. This is the happy outcome after countless people in the Philippines, in Indonesia, and across the world never gave up and fought up to the last hour. These efforts paid off, with President Joko Widodo making the decision at the 11th hour to spare the life of Mary Jane.

Ordinary people, relatives of OFWs, former OFWs, public interest lawyers, migrant advocates, activists, professionals, students, and Filipinos and friends across the world all contributed to make this movement and campaign a success: It convinced the Indonesian president to do the right thing and helped make sure the Philippine government would act to defend the life of a Filipino citizen. 

President BS Aquino. Photo by KJ Rosales/Manila Bulletin.
President BS Aquino. Photo by KJ Rosales/Manila Bulletin.

Quite interestingly, diehard supporters of President BS Aquino ushered in the commemoration of the 29th anniversary of 1986 People Power uprising by rehashing the discredited “Marcos pa rin!” battlecry into an Internet trending topic #NoynoyPaRin.

For a whole day, they convinced themselves that there’s no one else fit to lead the country at this time, except their idol. We don’t know what they smoked before and as they did it. But if they were aiming to change the topic of public conversations away from President BS Aquino’s command responsibility over the Mamasapano incident, let us tell them: Nice try.