
Sign the statement against the life-threatening harassment of the Philippine Hugpong ng Pagbabago party against Prof. Walden Bello, co-founder of and current senior analyst at the Bangkok-based think tank Focus on the Global South and winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize.
Let us stand together against the suppression of free speech and all forms of harassment!
Sign the statement here.
Deadline: 8 April 2022
Issued by Focus on the Global South. This article was published on 6 April 2022 at the site of Transform!Europe.
In a recent statement released by Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP or Alliance for Change), the regional party founded by Sara Duterte, daughter of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, activist-scholar Professor Walden Bello was unfoundedly and maliciously labelled as a “narco-politician.”
Prof. Bello is currently running for Vice President under Laban ng Masa (Fight of the Masses), a left-wing electoral coalition of democratic socialist and progressive groups, against Sara Duterte and several other candidates for the May 2022 Philippine National Elections. Last March 20, 2022, in a televised debate, Prof. Bello called out the issue of illicit drug trade in Davao City, dubbing it the “Drug Center” of Southern Philippines. Prof. Bello questioned why the former aide of Sara Duterte (Davao City’s incumbent Mayor) was exonerated and freed despite clear involvement in a recent drug bust in Davao. Prof. Bello also pointed out that Sara Duterte’s refusal to attend the said debate displayed a glaring lack of public accountability in confronting the said issue, against the backdrop of thousands killed in the Duterte administration’s deadly “war on drugs”.