Press Statement
Reference: Vince Casilihan
Spokesperson, Karapatan-Bikol
Some
PNP personnel of Legazpi City Police Station (LCPS) are suffering from
paranoia. Whether this malady, is the result
of their training or sheer stupidity?
Vince Casilihan, NUPL lawyer Atty. Duna Escio, and
Redemptorist priest Rev. Fr. Alex Bercasio visited the protest camp of ALECO
Employees Organization (ALEO) last April 11, 2014 night in front of ALECO main office in solidarity with the union members in their collective action
against the ALECO management’s defiance
of the return-to-work (RTW) order of the Secretary of the Department of Labor
and Employment (DOLE).
Members of
AMSSO received a report that Police on duty
inside ALECO compound reported a brazen lie to superiors
that “Vince Casilihan together with more or less
seven (7) men and women believed
to be from hinterlands” were seen in the protest camp
and even had a meeting with the protesting ALECO employees.
The paranoia
that affects the PNP rank and file is so brazen that any legitimate protest
action in the exercise of civil liberties
and in defense of human rights is given a red tagging. The same malady also affects all of the State
security forces.
In our
country where the culture of impunity prevails in the institutions in-charge of
the operations of the state security
forces, paranoia aggravates human rights violations.
The
protesting ALEO members are fighting for their rights under the Collective
Bargaining Agreement (CBA) which was upheld by the DOLE through the
return-to-work order.
The collusion
between the ALECO Old Interim Board headed by Bishop Joel Baylon and Atty.
Dondon Fernandez on one side; and San Miguel Corporation Global Power Holdings,
Inc., through Albay Power Energy
Corporation (APEC), that presently manages ALECO by way of unratified, illegal and deceptive concession
contract on the other side, grossly
violates the rights of the protesting
ALECO workers and plunges their families
into deeper misery because they were not
paid the salaries due them since September
2013 when they went on a strike until the present when the
return-to-work order was issued by DOLE. To these people managing ALECO the workers are
expendable commodity. Their continued stay in ALECO is a menace and a threat to
corporate greed and interest. Thus,
paranoia has crept even to the ALECO management.
What we have
now in ALECO are the paranoid management people, ably supported and protected
by the paranoid Old ALECO Interim Board, paranoid PNP, and paranoid
politicians.
