Editorial:
Arroyo regime's 10-point program is worthless and deceptive

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Gloria Arroyo's much-vaunted 10- point program is nothing but a grand deception. Its objective is none other than to hoodwink the people and cover up the regime's inutility to uphold the interests of the greater number. It brings intensifying exploitation and oppression to the people in the hands of plundering foreign and local capitalists, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists. It will bring nothing but further suffering and repression.

Aside from its loftier and even more incredible promises, Arroyo's 10-point program bears no difference from the empty pledges she made in her state of the nation address in July 2003. With none of the old promises fulfilled, we certainly can expect nothing from her new declarations.

The large-scale destruction of productive forces and the collapse of production go on unabated. The budget deficit is expected to reach P200 billion. The trade deficit and the government's gargantuan indebtedness as well as the Philippines' external debt continue to mount. Arroyo simply does not have the wherewithal to meet her targets.

Even bourgeois economists are disparaging of Arroyo's 10-point program, saying that it is too ambitious and its targets not grounded on reality. They take into consideration the fact that the economy is prostrate and saddled with a myriad problems. Arroyo's exceedingly lofty targets are actually an indication of her extreme desperation to deceive the people.

One of Arroyo's promises is to create six to 10 million jobs. If she failed to deliver on her previous promise of creating one million new jobs, what can we expect now, when as before, there are no plans to put an end to pro-imperialist policies that have caused local production to plummet and resulted in widespread unemployment nationwide? Whatever jobs generated will merely be contractual and last from three to five months in a year, or will be in the form of non-substantial work provided by government such as sweeping streets.

Despite the steep rise in daily expenses, the Arroyo regime has adamantly refused to increase workers' wages. It turns a blind eye and is silent in the face of successive increases in the price of gasoline, electricity, water and expressway costs. Worse, it even plans to impose more taxes on top of the extremely onerous burden already being shouldered by the toiling masses.

Its much-vaunted progress in agriculture is inconsequential. No development can be realized in the countryside if genuine agrarian reform is not implemented, and the monopoly power of old and new type landlords is instead strengthened.

Neoliberalization in agriculture, which Arroyo promotes, condemns the countryside to even more backwardness and poverty. The large-scale dumping of foreign agricultural products and expensive imported implements such as seedlings, fertilizer and pesticides, among others is killing local production and resulting in bankruptcy among farmers. No progress can be attained in the countryside other than that which benefits gigantic foreign monopoly agribusiness corporations and landlords.

No one buys Arroyo's claims of a "balanced national budget." Where will she get the funds? With the enormous budget deficit, it is the people who will surely be bled dry with all the additional taxes that will be imposed and the cutbacks on social services. To qualify for new loans, the regime will be doing a lot more begging on its knees with the IMF. And where will all the loans end up? Where else but in growing military expenditures and in servicing government indebtedness and the country's external debt. Where else but to line the pockets of corrupt government officials?

And what about Arroyo's statement regarding the "just conclusion of the peace process"? The government has shown in previous negotiations in Oslo, Norway, that it is not really serious about attaining peace. The Arroyo regime engages in negotiations with no other objective in mind but to deceive, pressure, and cause the surrender of the revolutionary movement. It vacillates when it comes to implementing agreements even as it remains intransigent on many other more important points.

There can be no peace without the resolution of the issues that lie at the roots of the civil war and for as long as Arroyo continues to intensify the "anti-terrorist war" and refuses to seriously confront the social and economic issues behind the raging people's war. If Arroyo's insists on being obstinate, the peace negotiations can never attain significant advances.

Even as the US-Arroyo regime refuses to squarely address the roots of the civil war, it continues to make overtures to its reactionary political rivals. It claims that it wishes to "close the book" on the people's uprising that brought down the despised Marcos and Estrada regimes in 1986 and 2001, respectively, but not towards the attainment of justice for the people and meting out punishment to those who have committed crimes against them. By coming to an arrangement with the Marcoses and the Estradas and offering bribes to its political rivals, the regime further fuels the people widespread loathing for the brazen electoral fraud perpetrated by Arroyo in the recent polls.

By implementing policies that repress the people and kowtow to US imperialism, the Arroyo regime drives the Filipino people to unite and put an end to its rule. However much the Arroyo regime wants to "close the book on the EDSA uprising," it will certainly face both a new uprising as well as the further advance of the revolutionary armed struggle waged by a people already suffering to the hilt and full of anger for the rotten reactionary system. The worsening crisis of the ruling system stresses the need for revolutionary struggle to fight for the people's national and democratic interests. Only the program for national-democratic change advanced by the Communist Party and revolutionary and progressive forces can resolve the biggest problems of the Filipino people.

07 July 2004
English Edition

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