CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, (PNA) -– Some 2,000 farmers, students, civil society and non-government organization group members held a church-peasant solidarity march rally Monday afternoon here to lobby for the complete abolition of the “pork barrel” system.
Organizers said that the march rally also commemorates the nationwide observance of the “Farmers’ Day” as a tribute to the “farmers who plant crops but without food on the table and tilled the farms without having to own lands.”
Richard Colao, chair of the Kapisanan ng Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) Northern Mindanao, said that participants from Iligan City, Cagayan de Oro, Gingoog, and Bukidnon joined the march rally that ended with a program at the Magsaysay Park in the city’s Divisoria Plaza.
The group would also likely bring the issue of genuine land reform and the corruption that shrouded the government’s agriculture department at the expense of lowly farmers.
Colao said that the complete abolition of the “pork barrel” would be the central issue of the day citing that the “pork” was the major source of corruption by people in the upper echelon of the country’s political strata.