By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of Peoples’ Struggles
October 3, 2015
On behalf of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, I wish to convey warmest greetings of solidarity to GABRIELA on the occasion of its 12th National Congress. We are highly appreciative of your more than three decades of serving and empowering Filipino women and for being the most outstanding women’s organization that takes the anti-imperialist and democratic line in the Philippines. We are proud of your being a member-organization of the ILPS.
We congratulate you for your achievements in campaigns, public education, services and organizing work on issues of violence against women, women’s economic and
political rights, and the general welfare of women and their families, especially in the last three years. It is fitting that your National Congress highlight and celebrate your achievements.
We anticipate that your Congress will respond to the challenges posed by poverty, lack of access to jobs and livelihood, worsening situation of violence against women and girls, human rights violations and foreign military presence and the effects of climate change and environmental destruction
on the lives of Filipino women. Women and children become most vulnerable under worsening conditions of exploitation and oppression.
We presume that your congress will pay attention to the coming national elections in 2016 and will consider how to promote and expand grass roots women’s electoral participation and how to continue to push the women’s agenda for needed reforms and carry out policy advocacy at all levels of
governance. We hope that you will continue to cause the election of legislative and executive officials who stand for the rights and interests of women.
While we consider the electoral struggle important, we are confident that you will continue to develop all forms of struggle that can further strengthen and empower GABRIELA and the women during and beyond the electoral campaign period. The mass protests on the streets and the deliberative indoor meetings are complementary and supportive of each other.
In view of the ever worsening crisis if the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords under the twin US policy of neocolonialism and neoliberalism, we urge GABRIELA to intensify the struggle for the rights and interests of women against the evils of monopoly capitalism. feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism and male chauvinism and to fight alongside the Filipino men in the overall struggle for national and social liberation.
All of us must struggle more resolutely and more militantly than ever before to realize the Filipino people’s demands for full national independence, democracy, social justice, development through land reform and national industrialization, the efflorescence of patriotic and progressive culture and an independent foreign policy dedicated peace and development.###
