CAGAYAN DE Oro City—Alarmed by the “privatization” of the government by traditional politicians, the founder and president of the advocacy group Gising Barangay Movement (GBM) has launched a book that aims to awaken the elites to take their place in history and rescue the government from the clutches of the trapos.

“I was alarmed at how the government is being privatized by the trapos, who then appropriate its resources and services for personal and family aggrandizement and vainglorious ambition,” lawyer Manuel Valdehuesa Jr. said, as he told the BusinessMirror why he wrote the book A Nation of Zombies (Powerless Grassroots, Clueless Elite, and the Cycle of Corruption in the Philippines), which was launched recently at the Capitol University Museum of Three Cultures.

TWENTY-five antimining protesters from the provinces of Mindoro Oriental and Occidental will stage an indefinite hunger strike starting today to denounce the issuance of an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) for the nickel-extraction project of a Norwegian mining company in the province.

Those holding the hunger strike include 16 indigenous members of the Mangyan tribes, seven Mindoro residents and two Catholic priests.  They were joined yesterday by about 300 other mining protesters who staged a mass protest in front of the main office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Quezon City.

SHOWING concern for the continued displacement of thousands of evacuees in war-torn Mindanao, a high-powered European Union (EU) mission recently visited three evacuation camps in the region.

Led by Luis Aria-Romero, ambassador of Spain, the EU panel met with key officials from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to assess and discuss the current situation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the region and the status of their rehabilitation and early recovery program.  The mission was in the area for one week from October 21.