Just a few days after 2023 began, yet another burden in the form of oil price hike beset the Filipino people. This is after the staggering 244 incidents of price hikes last 2022. As always, oil cartels justify the increase with the global market’s movements. And just like before, the US-Marcos regime openly tolerates and encourages these cartels and big profiteers to continue treating the nation as their personal milking cows for their superprofits.

First of all, these oil companies’ reasoning that oil prices need to increase because its prices increased in the world market is both illogical and an utter lie. The supply that they currently sell comes from their stockpile that they bought at previous rates and not the current selling prices. This means that whatever price movement happens now should not have any bearing and cannot be exploited as justification to increase current oil prices.

Also, the people has long called for concrete ways to impede and stop oil companies’ from unjustly and arbitrarily manipulating their products’ prices and controlling the market. The regime cannot plead innocent and pretend that it has not come up with any solution because, if it only has even a grain of genuine political will, the recommendations forwarded by different sectors to solve the oil price problem are more than enough. Some of these are the immediate removal of 10% tax on oil prices and the long-term solution of rescinding the Oil Deregulation Law.

This proves that the suffering the masses endure because of nonstop oil and other commodities price hikes can in fact be resolved if only the people seated in office seriously decides to diavow the neoliberal design and stop being inutile puppets blindly adhering to US imperialist’s every caprice. It is clear how the persistent problem of oil price hikes is borne out of the current existing semicolonial and semifeudal system tethered to imperialism’s exploitative doctrine. Only through the complete emancipation from these conditions and in advancing national democracy and related socioeconomic reforms such as genuine land reform and national industrialization can the oil crisis be fully resolved in turn.