Bahaghari stressed its support for the Gabriela Women’s Party as it faces a disqualification case filed by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) in the Commission on Elections (COMELEC).
“Gabriela Women’s Party, as part of the Makabayan Bloc, has represented women, children, and the LGBTQIA community for more than 20 years in Congress,” Bahaghari stressed, adding that “it has historically led the charge within legislation in highlighting several critical issues, including violence against women, sex trafficking, reproductive rights, and LGBTQIA rights.”
Bahaghari credited Gabriela for “critical laws”, such as the Magna Carta of Women, Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, Solo Parents Act, Magna Carta for Daycare Workers, the Expanded Maternity Leave Law, and “other pro-women and pro-people legislation have been successfully approved in Congress.”
Gabriela is presently working to pass the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) Bill, an anti-discrimination law “that is desperately needed to protect and uphold the lives, rights, and dignity of LGBTQIA Filipinos.”
For Bahaghari, “by seeking to disqualify Gabriela Women’s Party, the NTF-ELCAC demonstrates that it is more than willing to sacrifice and assail the rights of the LGBTQIA community, women, children, and countless other marginalized Filipinos in its senseless witch hunt against persons and organizations who remain critical.”
The LGBTQIA organization, therefore, calls not for this attack on “a legitimate party-list dedicating its entire agenda for the marginalized”; instead, “if anything, it is the dangerous, wasteful, and anti-democratic entity like the NTF-ELCAC which should be swiftly abolished. Between the two, it is the NTF-ELCAC that has proven itself to be a tool of terror, relentlessly red-tagging advocates, forcing them to ‘surrender'”‘ and become fake witnesses, and endangering the life, liberty, and security of Filipinos in service.”
In the end, Bahaghari expressed its “support for Gabriela and calls on COMELEC to junk this absurd, baseless, and unsubstantiated harassment suit. This is but a clear and pathetic attempt to deny Filipino women and LGBTQIA Filipinos of our right to political representation, a project to vilify and terrorize Filipinos who speak truth to power.”
