Greedy foreign and domestic giant monopoly capitalist oil companies are pocketing huge profits by increasing the prices of crude oil and petroleum products at the expense of the broad masses of workers and other toiling people.

They are using any and all pretext–the Kazakhstan uprising a few weeks ago, and now tensions whipped up by US and Russia in Ukraine–to artificially raise oil prices either by market speculations or by manipulating oil supplies and production. Oil companies are colluding with each other in setting prices to earn them superprofits. The oil monopoly capitalists are driven by their insatiable greed.

The prices of petroleum products in the Philippines have been increased by seven times in the past two months with diesel prices up by ₱9.15 per liter, gasoline by ₱6.75 per liter and kerosene by ₱8.45 per liter. The owners and executives of the biggest oil companies including Ramon Ang, Cesar Romero, Dennis Uy are raking in huge profits and accumulating massive amounts of wealth.

On the other hand, incessant increases in the prices of petroleum products are raising the costs of production, transportation and the prices of food and other necessities, and pushing down the people’s standards of living. Excise taxes imposed by the Duterte regime on petroleum products add to the burden of the people.

By pushing up petroleum prices without letup, the greedy capitalists are giving the toiling masses all the reason to rise up in protest to demand a rollback of oil prices. The people’s outrage is further being roused by the Duterte regime’s complete indifference to the plight of millions of jeepney and tricycle drivers, small income earners, low-wage workers, unemployed people, peasants and other toiling people.

The broad masses of the Filipino people must assert their social and economic rights, especially amid widespread unemployment, price increases, rising public debt, bureaucratic corruption, burdensome taxes and dumping of foreign surplus products.

The utter callousness of the oil capitalists and Duterte regime is proving to the people the necessity of taking to the streets in large numbers. In the past, the Filipino people have effectively fought oil price increases through militant resistance in the form of jeepney strikes, student rallies, community protests and street demonstrations.

They must now fight and defeat the tactics of the reactionary state to keep them silent and paralyzed using terror, intimidation and deception. The broad masses must do their utmost to mount strikes, demonstrations and other forms of mass actions, in order to effectively raise their voices and put an end to their sufferings.