The birth anniversary of working-class hero Andres Bonifacio has always been an occasion to know and support the plight and struggle of Filipino workers. This year, we mark Bonifacio’s 161^st birth anniversary amidst continuing violations of workers’ labor and human rights and lack of accountability for these violations.

The skyrocketting prices of basic goods and fees for basic services have drastically reduced the real value of workers’ wages. Independent think-tank Ibon Foundation tells us that former President Rodrigo Duterte presided over the lowest minimum wage increase in recent history. Instead of rectifying this, and despite projecting himself as different from his predecessor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr approved insultingly meager increases to the minimum wage.

While Duterte promised to end contractualization and actually pretended to do something about the employment scheme, Marcos Jr has remained silent on the issue. Contractualization is a wholesale violation of workers’ rights – from the right to a living wage to the right to security of tenure and the right to unionize, collectively bargain and strike – and Marcos Jr’s silence on the issue shows his regime’s callousness towards workers.

Duterte caused the imprisonment of almost labor activists using trumped-up charges. Marcos Jr did not take decisive action to free these political prisoners and has in fact added some more to their ranks. 27 unionists and labor organizers remain unjustly detained.

While Marcos Jr. welcomed United Nations Special Rapporteurs into the country, he did not implement one of their main recommendations – abolishing the center of red-tagging, National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.

We mark this year’s Bonifacio Day amidst the apparently intensifying rivalry between the Dutertes and the Marcoses. Lying at the bottom of this is the Dutertes’ refusal to be held accountable for corruption and rights violations – which the Marcos government is pushing for but only up to a limit. We demand that the Dutertes be held accountable and government processes for this be given free rein. 

With regard to economic policies, Marcos Jr’s term has so far embodied continuity with those of his predecessors: attracting foreign investors to create jobs in the country by offering cheap and repressed labor, and promoting cheap labor export. The country’s manufacturing and agriculture continue to decline, unable to offer decent jobs to Filipinos amidst the dominance of the service sector. The country still does not enjoy economic independence and suffers from economic dependence on the US and other global powers.

Bonifacio fought for the country’s freedom, and Marcos Jr is taking advantage of China’s incursions into the country’s territory to deepen the country’s neocolonial relations with the US. While he recently made a statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people amidst the US-backed Israeli genocide, his government has previously bought missiles and other military equipment from their tormentor, the Israeli government.

Amidst continuing labor and human rights violations, and the country’s lack of economic and genuine freedom, Bonifacio continues to serve as an example for the Filipino workers, their advocates, and the Filipino people. Today, we reaffirm our commitment to fight for labor and human rights, for accountability for rights violations, and for national freedom.