Overseas Filipinos, their families and advocates
Rise to Oust the Arroyo regime!
O U T R A G E !

Basis of Unity

OUTRAGE is a sectoral alliance composed of individuals and organizations of overseas Filipinos, their families and advocates. Its advocates include those from the church, academe, professional and business communities who support the struggle for migrants' rights and welfare.

OUTRAGE convenors and members are across the Philippines and around the world, in more than twenty countries. We are an umbrella formation through which the distinct concerns and voices of our sector will be heard. Our basis of unity is our call for the complete truth and justice about the massive electoral fraud committed by Gloria in the last national elections. We unite in calling for her immediate resignation or ouster because she has lost all legal and moral credibility as President.

Our activities as OUTRAGE will include participating and organizing events that will help raise the public's awareness about Gloria's massive fraud. We will project how our sector joins the ranks of many other Filipinos also crying for the truth and demanding justice. Further, OUTRAGE serves as a venue for us to illustrate the realities of migrants and their families under four years of the Gloria administration.

Greater hardship under Gloria

For our sector, the so-called first phase of Gloria's economic or job-creation program means increased poverty.

She fuels the intensifying economic hardship of the people by implementing globalization policies that serve foreign interests instead of the people's welfare. Manifestations of this include the expanded value added tax, the unbridled skyrocketing of oil prices and increases in the prices of other goods and services. Thus, we are not surprised that survey after survey reveals increasing numbers of Filipinos who are poorer, hungrier and more desperate to survive. For migrants and their families, this explains why almost 3,000 Filipinos daily are forced to work abroad in their bid to earn a decent living and attain even the simplest dreams in life - food, shelter and education.

Instead of raising wages, generating long-term jobs and viable livelihood opportunities in the Philippines, Gloria intensifies the export of Filipino workers overseas as cheap and flexible labor. From the onset, her target is the export of one million workers a year - with little regard about the high social cost this policy
wreaks on countless OFWs and their families.

She readily admits that the export of labor is part of her national development strategy, playing blind to the reality that our nation will never genuinely develop by exporting our best and brightest. Especially since the billions of dollars in remittances infused into the country yearly actually serves to prop up and thus keep our economy in this impoverished state. According to government figures, last year was a record one for Arroyo's labor export policy in that US$8.5 billion were remitted through official bank channels while more than 900,000 Filipino workers were forced to work overseas to survive. According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated US$21 billion in remittances through formal and non-formal channels are sent yearly.

In this light, foremost among the forms of protest actions OUTRAGE will lead is the call for the withholding of remittances through formal banking channels as long as Gloria Arroyo remains in power in order to illustrate our complete withdrawal of support from the Gloria administration.

To conclude, OUTRAGE is the alliance that brings together the broadest range of OFWs, returned migrants, their families and advocates. We unite in our call for the complete truth to come out regarding the massive fraud committed by Gloria during the last elections and we believe that Gloria's Presidency is indeed illegitimate, corrupt, anti-people and has no moral basis. We call for her immediate resignation or ouster. #

____________________________

OUTRAGE Convenors: Dr. Minguita Padilla, President, Sinag ng Bayan Foundation; Connie Bragas-Regalado, Chairperson, Migrante Sectoral Party; Amado Gat Inciong, Alyansang Nagkakaisa para sa Inang Bayan (ANIB); Prof. Ruel Pepa, Trinity College of Quezon City; Hanah Seneres, External Vice-President, OFW Family Club; Prof. Millie R. Espinas, Asian Center, UP Diliman; Maita Santiago, Secretary-General, Migrante International; Josue Loyola, Chairperson, Friends of Migrante; Dr. Rommel Linatoc, Migrante- Kingdom; Josh Castro, Secretary-General, League of Filipino Students (LFS)- California; Mazel Trinidad, Migrante-Youth.