By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
6 December 2010
On behalf of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, I wish to convey warmest greetings of solidarity to the leadership and membership of the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE) on the occasion of its 9th National Congress.
We congratulate you for your achievements in expanding and consolidating COURAGE and in carrying out campaigns, programs and services. We happy to know that the National Congress will discuss and finalize the assessment of your work as well as the proposed Three-Year Plan of COURAGE. We are confident that you will elect highly-motivated and competent officers of your National Council and National Executive Committee.
We welcome the theme of your National Congress: Government employees, be real servants of the people: Win substantial wage increases, frustrate the attack on jobs and rights, fight privatization, expose and oppose the phony call for change by the US-Aquino regime.
We consider the theme of your National Congress as highly important and urgently necessary. You must serve the people honestly and to the best of your ability even while the ruling clique, the highest politicians and highest bureaucrats are servile to foreign and domestic exploiters and oppressors, arrogant towards the people, corrupt, brutal and mendacious.
You must demand and win wage increases and thwart the attacks on jobs and rights even as the foreign monopolies and their local puppets intensify the exploitation of the people. You must fight privatization as the scheme of the imperialists and corrupt bureaucrats to rob the people of socially beneficial and profitable public assets. You must expose and oppose the US-Aquino regime as the continuation and aggravation of the policies and measures dictated by US imperialism and the local exploiting classes.
It is a shame that the new regime seeks to surpass the US-Arroyo regime in being subservient to the US-instigated policies of neoliberal globalization and the global war of terror involving state terrorism and of aggression. Budgetary deficits and public debt are
mounting but the public funds have been used mainly to increase the appropriations for the military and debt service and facilitate the extraction and outflow of superprofits.
We are confident that COURAGE will emerge stronger from its current congress and will be more resolute and more militant than ever before in fighting for the rights and interests of government employees and in linking them to the struggle of the working class and the entire Filipino people for national independence, democracy, social justice, development, peace and solidarity with all the people of the world.
We are always proud of COURAGE for being a founding member of ILPS at Zutphen, The Netherlands in 2001, for having participated in all the international assemblies so far held, for having excelled in organizing public sector employees and for having responded to the calls of the ILPS for international solidarity action on various issues and concerns.
In conclusion, we take the opportunity of urging you to participate in the Fourth International Assembly of the ILPS to be held in the national capital region in July next year. Your central and regional offices and your local unions can send delegations to the assembly. We look forward to your contributions in the plenary sessions and in the workshops on concerns that you are most interested in. Thank you. ###