When the Solution Becomes the Problem

Cesar Renerio
Spokesperson
NDF-North Central Mindanao
February 03, 2005

Macapagal-Arroyo's attempt in imposing additional taxes as the solution she crowed, to the the already downtrodden masses of workers, peasants, urban poor and professionals, government employees and the rank and file soldiers of AFP and PNP, is in reality an additional problem to the Filipino people burdened by the ever increasing prices of oil.

Taxing the already burdened people to extract the much needed revenue for her government to survive would enrage the people and rise up, who by culture is tamed to bear provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship and pain with fortitude and calm and without complaint, anger, or the like.

But not anymore! Burdening the people with these additional taxes is too much for them to bear having be the ones to suffer high rate of unemployment, widespread poverty and deteriorating social services. All things has its limit of elasticity. Even metals break off if pulled beyond its elastic limit. Same with patience. It has its own gauge when to burst and explode. And Macapagal-Arroyo should not underestimate the widespread opposition and protests this proposed tax increases and social services cuts would create.

Macapagal-Arroyo's puppetry to her imperialist master is demonstrated by her towing and adopting Bush's logic that the only "real freedom" is commercial freedom; the freedom to sell and the freedom to buy. "Free market globalization;" "Free trade."

Free speech, free press, religious freedom, political freedom - all these are relegated to secondary positions.

Her regime's subservience to the dictates of the IMF is made starkly clear in imposing additional taxes as part of the structural adjustment to extricate her regime from the hounding fiscal crisis. Arroyo should learn from the experience of Bolivia who after taking all the prescriprions of the IMF has remained after seventeen years of structural adjustment the poorest country in South America until now.

In solving recurrent destructive floods and a possible tsunami outburst what Macapagal-Arroyo did instead was to get a reversal of the former decision of the Supreme Court declaring unconstitutional the Mining Act of 1995 by bribing majority of the justices of the Supreme Court with money coming from the US, British and Dutch oil monopoly firms. Mining is more disastrous than logging to our environment. Whereas in logging only the trees are felled, in mining our mountains are scalped of whatever could be amassed for superprofits.

Macapagal-Arroyo should wake up now that the only solution for her regime to extricate itself from this chronic crisis is to undergo genuine revolutionary process.

Imposing additional taxes and cutting social services are not the solution. Total sell out of our sovereignty to multinational mining firms is also not the way out. What she should do instead is do away with its puppetry to US imperialism, implement genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization, must disgorge this bitter pill of structural adjustment prescribed by the IMF-WB, scrap all unequal treaties and do away with bureucratic corruption. Delist the CPP/NPA and Prof Joma Sison from "terrorists" listing because contrary to the reactionary state's perceptions they are on the contrary part of the solution.

But should Macapagal-Arroyo turned a deaf ear to the people's call for nationalist aspiration then a broad united front of all sectors notably of workers and peasants, urban poor, professionals, government and private employees, middle forces and those patrioric soldiers of the AFP and PNP could very well deliver the death knell to her puppet regime.

Thus in the not so distant future it would not be farfetched if Macapagal-Arroyo suffers the same fate of Argentina's leaders' who in the short span of one year have jettisoned three presidents.

FILIPINO PEOPLE UNITE! DOWN WITH US-ARROYO REGIME!

PATRIOTIC SOLDIERS OF THE AFP AND PNP, JOIN THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION AND DEMOCRACY!

LONG LIVE, A BROAD NATIONAL UNITED FRONT!

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