Editorial:
People to suffer greater afflictions

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Gloria Arroyo's three-year term saw a worsened economic and social crisis and the infliction of greater hardships and oppression on the people. Arroyo's plans laid out in her State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 26, which are all in accordance with the wishes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will exacerbate the situation in the next six years or more.

Following IMF dictates, Arroyo will strain to wipe out the budget deficit, balance the government budget and pay off the public and national debt to enable the country to borrow more from international banks.

Ten tax-related measures formed the centerpiece of Arroyo's speech, all of them intended to enable government to collect more than a hundred billion pesos needed to offset the Philippines' extremely large deficit and debt burden.

But the "solutions" proffered by the regime redound to added burdens. Among them are additional taxes on the gargantuan profits of oil and telecommunications companies as well as an increase in excise taxes on all goods and services. At first glance, a number of these taxes such as the franchise tax for servicing cellphones, additional tariffs on the importation of petroleum products, and the tax on the gross earnings of companies would be shouldered by corporate giants. In fact, it is ordinary folk who will end up footing any additional tax by having to pay higher prices for petroleum products, cellphone use and various goods and services.

Another extremely onerous "solution" that is supposed to alleviate the budget deficit is streamlining the bureaucracy with its attendant layoff of hundreds of thousands of government employees via early retirement. Government employees are the prime targets of government cost reduction because their salaries run to P286.5 billion annually and comprise 33.1% of the overall government budget.

The regime plans to lay off 30,000 government employees immediately with the abolition of 80 government agencies. Thirty other agencies are also set to be abolished. Malaca�ang has announced plans to lay off 100,000 employees next year due to "redundancy". However, COURAGE, a militant organization of government employees says that the Arroyo regime actually plans to fire up to 420,000 or 38% of its rank-and-file.

In an effort to stave off the government employees' intense anger and opposition, the regime has promised to help them set up their own businesses in view of the loss of their jobs�a ridiculous and extremely incredible proposition.

The massive layoff of government employees is inutile in reducing the budget deficit as it would not eliminate rampant and severe bureaucratic corruption and erroneous priorities which are the biggest causes behind the squandering of government resources. Not only would it worsen unemployment, it would likewise reduce the already inadequate number of public agencies providing basic services. Tens of thousands more are set to be booted out of work with the privatization of government-owned corporations.

One of the state companies to be privatized is the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR). In her SONA, Arroyo chose to underscore the need for sufficient, efficient and inexpensive electricity supply, a need that would supposedly be satisfied through privatization. This dovetails the IMF line that it is the private sector that should be tasked with supplying and setting the price of electricity to free electrical services from government anomalies, inutility and corruption.

The country's experience with privatization is unequivocal, however. Contrary to the promised reduction of electricity costs, relegating services to the avarice of private business has caused already dizzying costs of electricity and other services to shoot up. There is no basis for contemplating that things will be any different with NAPOCOR's privatization. NAPOCOR will definitely raise the cost of the electricity it supplies to power distributors, and distributors will surely recoup higher costs by charging consumers more.

Arroyo repeated her promise to generate new jobs, clarifying however that it is "the prospering sectors of industry, services and small businesses" that will raise employment opportunities in the cities and the agribusiness sector that would be responsible for generating employment in the countryside and stemming the flow of peasants into urban areas.

But even as she spoke of this, the manufacturing sector continued on its inexorable decline. Arroyo was silent on how to go about developing industry, the real job creating agent for workers. Rather, her regime merely intends to perpetuate imperialist "globalization" and other neocolonial policies that prevent any development of national industrialization. Unemployment will continue to worsen as long as the country has no genuine industries.

Joblessness will likewise continue to worsen as long as the centuries-old land problem is not resolved. Arroyo said nothing about agrarian reform save for pushing her plan to use farmlands as collateral for bank loans, including lands already distributed under the government's sham land reform program. It is a proposition that would further deprive peasants of their farms.

What all this brings to the fore even more is the hollowness and failure of the government's much-vaunted land reform program. With bankruptcy widespread among the peasantry, many of them will definitely be unable to pay their debts and would end up having their lands foreclosed. Other private banks would then be carrying out the role that the Land Bank of the Philippines has long played in seizing peasants' farmlands and selling them to anyone who could afford to pay the price set by the banks. It is a systematic and legal means of confiscating peasants' lands and reconcentrating them in the hands of landlords, hacienda owners and big agribusiness corporations.

Arroyo also plans to commence "cha-cha" (charter change) by 2005. This is a sordid scheme to obliterate from the charter any remaining formal obstacle to the imperialist violation of national sovereignty and intervention in the Philippines' internal affairs. It would likewise eliminate any hindrance to the further control and abuse of the economy by imperialists and their lackeys. The people's movements will be further restricted, their resistance suppressed, and their civil liberties trampled in the name of the US' "anti-terrorist war".

"Cha-cha" likewise involves shifting the system of government from a presidential to a parliamentary one, something that Arroyo and her supporters in congress have long been eagerly anticipating. They have obviously been enthusiastically pushing for "cha-cha" for their own personal gain, mainly since it would be a means of extending their terms.

In the face of all this, Arroyo's SONA was conspicuously silent on many other extremely major issues. Arroyo had no response to the demand for a P155 increase in the daily wage that would enable workers to receive the minimum income needed for their families to live decently. She was also silent on the P3,000 salary increase demanded by government employees and on the demand to reduce the prices of goods and services, as well as other demands to provide the people with even a modicum of immediate relief.

There is no mistaking what is in store for the next six or more years under the Arroyo regime�more suffering and sacrifice for the people, especially the toiling masses who have long been suffering and sacrificing.

"The people first!" was Arroyo's key slogan in her SONA. But the reality behind her much-vaunted plans reveal the exact opposite.

07 August 2004
English Edition

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