Last week, the leaders of DILA (Defenders of Indigenous Languages of the Archipelago) through its Tacloban Chapter started a petition specifically calling for the immediate removal of Virgilio S. Almario as Chair of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF).
The petition alleges, among others, that (a) Almario does not satisfy the qualification requirement of Section 6 of RA 7104 which in 1991 created the Commission on the Filipino Language (Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino). Section 6 specifically provides: “No one shall be appointed as commissioner unless he/she is … noted for his/her expertise in linguistics…”; (b) Almario, without prior authorization, has changed the name of the country from “Pilipinas” to “Filipinas” in public documents, including a message by the President of the Philippines for the 225th birthday of Francisco Balagtas; (c) Almario fraudulently tampered with the implementing rules and regulations of RA 7104 by removing the “noted for their linguistic expertise” requirement for commissioners and watering the same down to simply “language expertise” to suit his own purposes; and (d) Almario continues to oppose mother tongue-based multilingual education which is the official language-in-education policy of the country, as provided for under RA 10533, and instead promotes a “Tagalog/Filipino-biased” education policy — this opposition to MTB-MLE is glaringly shown by KWF’s approval of a “national orthography” which requires ALL spelling systems in ALL Philippine languages to adhere to, in violation of Section 5, letter (h) of RA 10533 which states that the responsibility of developing, approving and publishing local materials shall devolve to the regional and division education units of the Department of Education.
Click here to go add your name to and/or read the online petition.