Gov’t workers join boycott
EVEN government employes have joined the boycott movement.
Teachers of the Philippine Science High School announced that they, too, will boycott all crony corporations, banks and newspapers.
More than that, they promised to persuade their students to do the same.
They also said they will negotiate with the PSHS Consumers Cooperative to stop selling San Miguel products; call off classes on the first working day after the inauguration of Mr. Marcos, and push through with the collection of “freedom fund.”
Policemen also ha joined the boycott bandwagon. Several Quezon City policemen said they have stopped buying “crony” newspapers even before the Opposition called for it.
Sources at the Quezon City police station said they have long been disillusioned with the brand of “lip service journalism” they said the crony papers practice.
Several policemen, who asked not to be identified, said they are “sick” of how the papers had been distorting news. One of them, a patrolman assigned to the Special Investigation Division said he has asked his family to stop buying the said newspapers.
A newspaper vendor, Lucia Ignacio, who has been in business for eight years at the Quezon City Hall, said that she could sell at most ten copies of each of the crony paper, down from a peak of 25 a day.
Joe Panganiban, a newsboy along Quezon Blvd., gave a similar observation. “If it’s a Marcos headline, sales are lower,” Joe claimed. “Basta Laban, malakas,” butted in the other newsboys who noticed the interview.
But Eric, a newsboy at Cubao, was not so happy. He said when strangers ask him why he was still selling Bulletin Today, he could only answer, “Ito lang ang hanapbuhay ko (This is the only job I have).”
The government’s Philippine News Agency has also done their man-on- the-street interviews and came up with people angered over the boycott call. Samples:
Evelyn Balajadia, 31, church leader said: “That is total disobedience and non-submission to authorities God will intervene in the situation.”
(From reports by Tony Bergonia, Chay O. Florentino and the Philippine News Agency)
