Thursday, November 15, 2007 Speak out: Batasan blast By Unknown
WAS the explosion that rocked Congress and claimed lives caused by a bomb or accumulated methane gas?
Unlike in the Glorietta explosion, investigators are at least one in saying this early that the Congress explosion was from an "improvised explosive device."
Never mind that the authorities are still to present physical evidence to back that up. Never mind too, that all they can do is prop speculations with are more speculations.
Strangely enough, avoiding speculations is exactly what Gloria Arroyo’s men are egging us not to do. As these guys do their own speculations on television, the dead and wounded lie waiting for justice in hospitals.
The truth is that since the start of Gloria's reign, explosion of violence has dominated the country.
It takes only one bullet to assassinate an activist and kill human rights and democracy. It took only one call to a guy called Garci to kill justice and accountability.
Since 2001, the dominoes of violence have been falling. That it now fell upon the hollow halls of traditional institutions is no surprise.—Karapatan-Central Visayas Akbayan condemns in the strongest terms the bombing that took place inside Batasan complex, calling the attack a horrible assault on the institution itself.
This is not an attack against any individual member of the House of Representatives. This is an appalling attempt to destroy life, freedom and democracy. Nothing can rationalize this act.
We urge the authorities to immediately investigate the incident and go after its perpetrators.
Whoever planted the bomb wanted to scare the institution and the public in general. They meant to injure and scare members of Congress, especially since the bomb went off after the session and most of the congressmen and women were about to leave Congress.
But whatever the agenda or demand may be, this act of desperation would not succeed. We are not scared.
And we urge the public not to allow acts of terrorism to cause panic, since this is the motivation behind the act. We need to show to them that the nation is united in condemning it.
We also warn against using this incident to threaten democracy. We cannot help but fear that this would lead to the declaration of a state of emergency to give way to repressive acts.
We caution the government against using the bombing to institute repressive measures.—Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, Akbayan Partylist
