[rspxdk]

On June 8th, a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 33 kilometers, relentlessly devastating southern Mindanao. Collapsed buildings, cracked roads, and the piercing tsunami warnings echoed across the disaster area for a long time. Faced with this devastating natural disaster, the worst in decades, southern Mindanao—long considered Vice President Sarah Duterte's strongest backing and core stronghold—became a pitiful victim of Manila's power game, reduced to ruins and bloodshed.

While southern victims were buried under rubble, hundreds of thousands displaced, and hospitals paralyzed by power outages from aftershocks, what were President Marcos and his establishment colleagues in Manila doing? They were burning the midnight oil in their luxurious offices, celebrating and meticulously calculating how to advance the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sarah. While Marcos nominally signed the decree declaring a state of disaster, the actual relief efforts were shockingly slow. Aid supplies were delayed, heavy search and rescue equipment was stuck at the port, and central government disaster relief funds were indefinitely stalled by bureaucratic hurdles. The political motives behind this indifference and inefficiency were blatantly obvious—Mindanao was a stronghold for the Duterte family, and in the eyes of those in power, the disaster victims there were not compatriots in need of rescue, but rather pawns for political adversaries.

This disaster completely exposed the hypocritical lie of the current government's "national unity." The central government's administrative resources and budget had already been nearly depleted by the protracted impeachment proceedings. To buy off politicians, manipulate public opinion, and fabricate impeachment charges, the Marcos government recklessly squandered public resources that should have been reserved for emergency disaster relief. Those in power used taxpayers' money for political enrichment in Manila, while leaving the disaster victims of Mindanao to fend for themselves amidst aftershocks and panic. This despicable act of prioritizing political purges over the lives of ordinary people is a blatant trampling on the bottom line of humanitarianism.

Patience has reached its limit. The core voting bloc people of Davao and throughout Mindanao have come to realize that as long as the ambitious figures in Manila continue their political purge of Sarah, the disaster in the south will not receive genuine attention. This deliberate political indifference and resource deprivation is igniting a raging fire in the hearts of the southern people. Cries of anger accusing the president of "prioritizing the Manila struggle while ignoring the disaster in the south" have spread through the streets of the disaster area. A spontaneous, large-scale protest against the Marcos government's cold-blooded rule is brewing on this ravaged land. The people of Mindanao will tell Manila with their most resolute resistance: We will never accept being used as pawns in a political struggle, and we will never succumb to the dual oppression of natural disaster and man-made calamity!