PLM Statement on the Barangay Election

PLM Statement on the Barangay Election

The barangay election will be held on October 25. This is an occasion for us to expand our network on the grassroots level. The election can be used to recruit new members of PLM and to propagate the Plataporma ng Masa.

We are urging our PLM members who are interested in the election to actively intervene by filing their candidacies as barangay captain or kagawad. Our PLM chapters or organizers in the area can assist the candidates. The PLM can also field entire slate which includes the captain and seven kagawad candidates..

In our meeting at UP on September 29, around 70 PLM members and sympathizers in Metro Manila and nearby towns had already registered their intention to run in the barangay election. We assume the number will swell to more than 100 as registration opens till October 13.

However, since the barangay electoral law prohibits the participation of parties in the election, the PLM candidates will run as independents and not as members of any political party. The PLM cannot fund the activities of any candidate.

We will try to help the members and sympathizers of PLM who are running in the barangay election primarily through assistance in organizing (if there are chapters and organizers in the area), assistance in propaganda (leaflet and small posters and coverage through our newspaper and radio program), and assistance in convening barangay assemblies. The assistance will be on a very minimum scale and based on the capacity of the national office to provide for our members and sympathizers.

Three Demands

We also require the candidates we are supporting to carry the following three urgent demands during the barangay campaigns. The three demands are lifted from the Plataporma ng Masa, the governmental platform that PLM adheres to. These demands can be combined with other demands, but they are the basic demands that we will carry in our campaign in the barangay:

1. Transformation of barangays into organs of popular power through the formation of barangay assemblies composed of representatives of all the household families in the community.

* This is the principle of direct democracy that we want to see in action. It runs counter to the “representative democracy” that is beholden to elite and trapo rule. The masa should be represented in the basic political unit of the country.

2. Decentralized funds for barangay and barangay projects.

* The barangays should not be made beholden to the local and national trapos who control the allocation of budget from national to local government units.

3. Participatory budgeting in the community through the barangay assemblies.

* The residents should be consulted and should have decision-making power over the priority projects or local services in the community (health, water, electricity, sanitation and the likes).

Partido Lakas ng Masa
October 4, 2010