Women, vote to take back our dignity and rights

On April 30, 82 years ago, Filipino women won our right to vote. It was a hard-won battle for women’s equality that our suffragist foremothers fought. Yet the struggle to enlarge the space for women in politics continues. The politics of patronage and corruption endures.

Let us make our stand clear through our vote in the coming elections. Let it be known that Filipino women do not support an administration that sends women officials to jail on false charges and removes from office those critical of extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations; that promotes fake news against independent women leaders and files trumped-up charges against independent women journalists, even accusing them of plotting the President’s ouster; that sets a bad example of how to harass female subordinates and overseas Filipino workers, and tells jokes about rape and other forms of violence against women, even telling soldiers that they can rape women or shoot them in the vagina.

Let our votes show our strong disapproval of this administration’s wrong approach to fighting the problem of illegal drugs. Nearly 300 women have been killed in the antidrug operations. Hundreds of thousands of mothers, wives and children have been bereaved by the deaths of 30,000 on the basis of unverified narcolists.

The defeat of senatorial, congressional and other candidates of the administration will be the resounding expression of our disapproval at the liberation of plunderers, the recycling of corrupt officials and the restoration of the Marcos legacy. Let it register our opposition to the surrender of our patrimony to our aggressive neighbor China, to the illegal entry of its workers and to onerous loans wrapped in secrecy.

This is not the path we want our country to take. Knowing that reversal will be so difficult, we must stop this administration in its corrupt and treasonous tracks.

Take back our dignity and rights. Vote for worthy candidates who care for our country and our future.

TERESITA QUINTOS DELES, convenor, EveryWoman