{"id":26499,"date":"2014-09-19T19:38:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T11:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=26499"},"modified":"2014-09-20T11:37:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T03:37:18","slug":"budget-sec-abad-mobbed-heckled-at-up-diliman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/19\/budget-sec-abad-mobbed-heckled-at-up-diliman\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget Sec Abad \u2018mobbed\u2019, heckled at UP Diliman"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Budget<\/a>
Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad official ohoto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA – Budget Secretary Butch Abad on Thursday expressed his disappointment over the behaviour of a group of student activists at the University of the Philippines Diliman.<\/p>\n

Abad said that instead of engaging in sober dialogue, members of the STAND UP student organization mobbed him and hurled objects at him after he spoke in a forum for the UP Baliktaktakan ED Series put together by the University Student Council.<\/p>\n

The Budget Secretary revealed that he thought the forum would be a venue “for an interesting and lively exchange;” but as he was preparing to leave the place, he was surrounded by a group of 50-60 aggressive student protestors.<\/p>\n

“I said I was prepared to address their concerns. Once I began approaching the STAND UP group, however, the protesters–who were around 50 to 60 strong–did not engage me in dialogue. Instead, they surrounded me aggressively as I made my way towards the vehicle. I had objects thrown at me, and one student even attempted to grab me by the collar,” he said.<\/p>\n

Anakbayan chairman Vencer Crisostomo confirmed via a Facebook post that the student-activists mobbed Abad, and\u00a0 threw coins and paper at him.<\/p>\n

“Kinuyog siya, he could not easily enter his car and his vehicle was blocked. As he boarded his vehicle, a student got close and grabbed him from the back by his collar,\u201d Crisostomo added.<\/p>\n

The student activists \\were decrying the Aquino administration’s controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) the system of discretionary funds, such as the pork barrel.<\/p>\n

Abad defended the highly-criticized DAP at the discussion on the 2015 budget.<\/p>\n

In his statement issued about the incident at UP Diliman,\u00a0 Abad stressed that the public has a right to voice out its opposition to the government; for such is healthy democracy.<\/p>\n

“Ideally, we should be able to engage each other in frank, sober discourse. I wholly understand that fighting for the welfare of our country is often an emotional and passionate pursuit,” he said.<\/p>\n

However, he stressed that, \u201cthere is no place here for violence and aggression, and especially not in an academic environment. All that a mob wants is to harm its target, never mind truth or propriety; beyond that, it stands for nothing else.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  MANILA – Budget Secretary Butch Abad on Thursday expressed his disappointment over the behaviour of a group of student …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,1145,95],"tags":[7630,693,7904,1157,7906,7905],"class_list":["post-26499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-headline","category-news-ph","tag-budget-secretary-abad","tag-dap","tag-mobbed-at-up-diliman","tag-pork-barrel","tag-stand-up","tag-up-student-activists","mauthors-angie-duarte","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}