DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/24/2010
Behind the quaint portraiture of Aquino III’s supposed modesty and frugality; behind that tired “wang-wang” spiel to the most recent juxtaposition of his “measly” P25-million US trip to Gloria Arroyo’s P1-billion junkets last year, lies a face that the three-headed miscommunications hydra is so desperately trying to hide from the public. That face, with its characteristic smirk and misplaced grin, dreadfully bespeaks a cruel, dehumanizing, and heartless government dead-set on fully implementing a so-called “legacy” that has brought this nation to ruin.
Such legacy, summed up in three decades of economic and political policy “reform” measures a.k.a. “neo-liberalism,” has put in place the following “deforms:”
1) Liberalization of the economy and the absolute rule of the market — which means total control of society by Wall Street, i.e. the Philippine Stock Exchange in local terms, as well as by Big Business in general; the removal of tariffs; and “trickle down” economics, or letting the big guys get all the goods while letting the crumbs trickle down ever so slowly (which has not even happened at all);
2) Cutting public expenditure for social services (such as education and health care, maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply, etc.) — reducing, if not eliminating, government’s role and increasing private corporatist control over these;
3) Deregulation — reducing government supervision and control of anything that may diminish corporate profits, including protecting the environment and ensuring food and job security, as well as public safety;
4) Privatization — selling state-owned enterprises, goods and services (including banks, key industries, railroads, toll ways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water) to private investors;
5) Eliminating the concept of “The Public Good” — replacing it with so-called “individual” or “corporate responsibility,” leaving the small and powerless to fend for themselves, then branding them as “lazy” for their joblessness and poverty;
6) Globalization under the rule of the Gatt-WTO — embodied in the policy that the West imposed on the rest of world through the United Nations’ various trade organizations.
The Philippines, which the past governments of Fidel Ramos and Gloria Arroyo had proudly declared to be the most globalized in the region, now has the highest electricity cost in Asia (and among the highest in the world), and the same in terms of water, port services, and toll fees — public services that were started to be privatized during Cory Aquino’s watch, after the so-called “People Power” of 1986.
Last week, upon prodding from Serge Osmeña III (the power industry’s Senate avatar) among others, Aquino III’s Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) withdrew the senior citizens’ exemption from the 12 percent value-added tax on electricity and water. Despite this just being one of the few token humanitarian concessions given to one of society’s most vulnerable sectors — the elderly who rely on measly retirement benefits of contracting real value — the BIR chief still hurriedly withdrew it without any qualms.
One of Aquino III’s spokesmen, Edwin Lacierda, then countered: “The Aquino administration is willing to sacrifice its overwhelming popularity in exchange (for) implementing revenue generation measures,” thus vividly replicating Judas sacrificing Christ for 30 pieces of silver!
I am using the term Aquino III and not PeNoy because I want there to be no mistake that I am writing any of these in jest. The cruelty and inhumanity of this administration is but an escalation of the previous Arroyo regime’s ills. From its progressing impoverishment of the nation; its diminution of every government capability to support public welfare; to its systematic devaluation of the people’s citizenship in a Republic for overseas and corporate slavery — all these are vintage Aquinorroyo.
The last is even worse as the fate of our citizens has been consigned to the International Monetary Fund-World Bank and mega corporations while these are merely kept alive by our sovereign guarantees, as well as tax money, to amortize over generations all our unjust debts (such as the P950-billion universal charge in electricity and the growing P140-billion public-private partnership projects).
Kim Henares must be proud of this dehumanization of our countrymen while she cavorts with her beloved hubby in their nice convertibles and grand motor bikes (as one lifestyle magazine showed).
I hope the 90 million Filipinos, especially those fooled into voting for this “good man” now being revealed as an ogre, will learn from their repeated mistakes from the time of Edsa I and Cory Aquino. Some, like Teddy Locsin on Karambola, are beginning to admit their grievous sin in the continuing perfidy of proclaiming the Aquinos and other Yellows as a bunch of saints.
I cannot go beyond writing and raging about these since I am already a known dissident, but those who are yet unrevealed should take action to stop this cruel social and economic violence committed by these ogres against Philippine society. If something isn’t done soon, there will be no redeemable nation by the end of the term of this “last Aquino,” who will by then have succeeded to drag the entire country down with his sorry self.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8+ to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, September 24, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
BSP (Bunk-O Sentral ng Pilipinas)
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/20/2010
Nowhere can a Filipino find more bunk in this bunk rich land than at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which again boasts of an expansion in the country’s gross international reserves when the value of the currency it keeps is in danger of imminent massive crash. That means Filipinos will be holding close to $50 billion of worthless bunk, or US T-bills, when the music stops. But do Tetangco, Guinigundo, Paderanga et al. give a hoot? Would they even bother with the thought of more Filipinos finding themselves in the poorhouse once the dollar crash descends upon the world, since they are paid tens of millions anyway to keep the farce alive? Quite simply, this kind of bunk, in tandem with the Department of Finance (DoF)’s peso bonds, will be our final ruin.
A whole spectrum of financial and currency analysts, as well as scholars — from renowned economists such as New York University Professor Noriel Roubini to similarly prestigious Mark Solomon — have already projected the dollar crash between now and the middle of 2011.
According to Roubini, “If markets were to believe, and I’m not saying it’s likely, that inflation is going to be the route that the US is going to take to resolve this problem, then you could have a crash of the value of the dollar… The value of the dollar over time has to fall on a trade-weighted basis, but not necessarily relative to euro and yen.”
Solomon adds, “…a 20-percent drop in the value of either a stock or financial holding over a period of time is considered a crash. The US dollar already crashed from 120 on the USDX down to its current level of 75. This 45-point drop, or roughly 33-percent drop, over several years, meets the definition of a crash.”
A growing number of Filipinos who are becoming aware of this but still cannot do anything, as the Aquino government is simply clueless as can be, must therefore keep on educating fellow Filipinos on this.
Last week the Japanese Central Bank intervened by buying up dollars to support it. Take this news two days ago: “Japan props up dollar for first time since 2004… for the first time in six years, selling the yen to buy dollars. It follows a surge in the value of the Japanese currency to a 15-year peak which was spooking business leaders worried about its effects on exports…”
The BSP, in turn, is building up precarious US dollars while the DoF issues more debts in the $1-billion peso bonds, which are inevitably dollar debts because all of its transactions will still be in dollars. Despite the DoF’s Foolish-ima spin, the Philippine peso is not of reserve quality anywhere.
At the same time, Malacañang’s P15-billion public-private partnership (PPP) projects which are really taxpayer-driven, will give sovereign guarantee funds again to the plutocrats and US crony capitalists, who are now boosting the local stock market.
Foreign portfolio investors always smell easy, quick, and gargantuan profits whenever PPP-type projects in power, water, infrastructure (such as tollways), etc. are given special financial packages guaranteed with taxpayers’ and consumers’ money.
These inelastic or unavoidably necessary public utilities, which used to be a right of any citizen and provided free or for the most minimal of costs since the public funded them, were, under the Yellows’ political-economic philosophy beginning with Cory Aquino, converted into profiteering opportunities for private enterprises, with complete disregard for public welfare and development. For this reason, state revenues will continue to dwindle and public institutions will have to rely more and more on other means to survive.
These economic and financial policies are directly connected to such issues as the current “Juetengate” bedeviling the new Aquino. Jueteng is now the only source of funds for the Philippine National Police (PNP) top brass to maintain a lifestyle befitting of members of the ruling class. After all, what’s all the hardship for if not to give them the wherewithal to put their children into exclusives schools, travel on European junkets, and have the latest cars and the money to run for elections? Aren’t most members of the ruling class living it up, say, on the sinecure of a congressman’s “pork barrel,” which come from debts such as the Foolish-ima peso bonds, which in turn increase the state’s penury and inability to sustain itself?
PeNoy Aquino knows the realities of life in government; he has seen it all since childhood. Surely, he’s not about to start a rebellion in the police brass by really cracking down on that illegal numbers game.
Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s campaign against the “immoral” jueteng is also a bunk-load in the contradiction that he personally faces for not condemning all forms of gambling such as church bingos, raffles, sharing in horse racing proceeds, and legalized gambling that impoverish and break up families. And if he condemns jueteng because it is illegal, then it is another contradiction for him not to endorse its legalization.
Contradictions make for a lot of bunk; so does hypocrisy; even fraud. Although some priests can almost beat the Bunk-O Sentral ng Pilipinas in its amount of bunk, in the end, the financial sector still beats ‘em all. With the help of controlled mainstream media, many Filipinos still unconsciously swallow them in leaps and bounds. This space, however, will continue to try its darn best to expose the bunk to save our fellow citizens from it.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/20/2010
Nowhere can a Filipino find more bunk in this bunk rich land than at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which again boasts of an expansion in the country’s gross international reserves when the value of the currency it keeps is in danger of imminent massive crash. That means Filipinos will be holding close to $50 billion of worthless bunk, or US T-bills, when the music stops. But do Tetangco, Guinigundo, Paderanga et al. give a hoot? Would they even bother with the thought of more Filipinos finding themselves in the poorhouse once the dollar crash descends upon the world, since they are paid tens of millions anyway to keep the farce alive? Quite simply, this kind of bunk, in tandem with the Department of Finance (DoF)’s peso bonds, will be our final ruin.
A whole spectrum of financial and currency analysts, as well as scholars — from renowned economists such as New York University Professor Noriel Roubini to similarly prestigious Mark Solomon — have already projected the dollar crash between now and the middle of 2011.
According to Roubini, “If markets were to believe, and I’m not saying it’s likely, that inflation is going to be the route that the US is going to take to resolve this problem, then you could have a crash of the value of the dollar… The value of the dollar over time has to fall on a trade-weighted basis, but not necessarily relative to euro and yen.”
Solomon adds, “…a 20-percent drop in the value of either a stock or financial holding over a period of time is considered a crash. The US dollar already crashed from 120 on the USDX down to its current level of 75. This 45-point drop, or roughly 33-percent drop, over several years, meets the definition of a crash.”
A growing number of Filipinos who are becoming aware of this but still cannot do anything, as the Aquino government is simply clueless as can be, must therefore keep on educating fellow Filipinos on this.
Last week the Japanese Central Bank intervened by buying up dollars to support it. Take this news two days ago: “Japan props up dollar for first time since 2004… for the first time in six years, selling the yen to buy dollars. It follows a surge in the value of the Japanese currency to a 15-year peak which was spooking business leaders worried about its effects on exports…”
The BSP, in turn, is building up precarious US dollars while the DoF issues more debts in the $1-billion peso bonds, which are inevitably dollar debts because all of its transactions will still be in dollars. Despite the DoF’s Foolish-ima spin, the Philippine peso is not of reserve quality anywhere.
At the same time, Malacañang’s P15-billion public-private partnership (PPP) projects which are really taxpayer-driven, will give sovereign guarantee funds again to the plutocrats and US crony capitalists, who are now boosting the local stock market.
Foreign portfolio investors always smell easy, quick, and gargantuan profits whenever PPP-type projects in power, water, infrastructure (such as tollways), etc. are given special financial packages guaranteed with taxpayers’ and consumers’ money.
These inelastic or unavoidably necessary public utilities, which used to be a right of any citizen and provided free or for the most minimal of costs since the public funded them, were, under the Yellows’ political-economic philosophy beginning with Cory Aquino, converted into profiteering opportunities for private enterprises, with complete disregard for public welfare and development. For this reason, state revenues will continue to dwindle and public institutions will have to rely more and more on other means to survive.
These economic and financial policies are directly connected to such issues as the current “Juetengate” bedeviling the new Aquino. Jueteng is now the only source of funds for the Philippine National Police (PNP) top brass to maintain a lifestyle befitting of members of the ruling class. After all, what’s all the hardship for if not to give them the wherewithal to put their children into exclusives schools, travel on European junkets, and have the latest cars and the money to run for elections? Aren’t most members of the ruling class living it up, say, on the sinecure of a congressman’s “pork barrel,” which come from debts such as the Foolish-ima peso bonds, which in turn increase the state’s penury and inability to sustain itself?
PeNoy Aquino knows the realities of life in government; he has seen it all since childhood. Surely, he’s not about to start a rebellion in the police brass by really cracking down on that illegal numbers game.
Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s campaign against the “immoral” jueteng is also a bunk-load in the contradiction that he personally faces for not condemning all forms of gambling such as church bingos, raffles, sharing in horse racing proceeds, and legalized gambling that impoverish and break up families. And if he condemns jueteng because it is illegal, then it is another contradiction for him not to endorse its legalization.
Contradictions make for a lot of bunk; so does hypocrisy; even fraud. Although some priests can almost beat the Bunk-O Sentral ng Pilipinas in its amount of bunk, in the end, the financial sector still beats ‘em all. With the help of controlled mainstream media, many Filipinos still unconsciously swallow them in leaps and bounds. This space, however, will continue to try its darn best to expose the bunk to save our fellow citizens from it.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, September 17, 2010
Honorable Capt. Gary Alejano’s struggle
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/17/2010
When I watched the farcical Senate, with the likes of Joker Arroyo faulting media’s work in the hostage crisis, and read such do-nothing solons criticizing our colleagues Michael Rogas of RMN and the TV crews, I can only thank media for risking life and limb to get the full story or else the tales of the dead hostages and Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza may never have come to light — this, as the highest officials of the land are still trying to cover up their dark motives, siopao predilections, and gross incompetence.
Media need not apologize; the authorities failed to direct the scene in every way. But as I watch these farces, I remember the real struggle of a few good men of idealism and vision, continuing their fight for justice and social change despite the absence of media’s klieg lights: Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, still in unjust detention, and Capt. Gary Alejano, who won the mayorship of Sipalay, Negros Occidental but was Hocus-PCOSed and now fights for a manual recount.
Media should pay more attention to these real struggles, as these people are the ones who can make the difference. In fact, the women behind these warriors are as dedicated and visionary, too: Arlene Trillanes, once a military officer in her own right, and Minnie Alejano, who carried the campaign when Gary was in detention. The public knows much more about Senator Trillanes than they do about Gary Alejano. The latter is a young Marine officer who abandoned the much-coveted Medal of Valor Award almost eight years ago on the day he chose to join the Bagong Katipuneros’ march to Oakwood to make a stand for change by condemning corruption in the military and beyond. In all these years, Alejano’s twin girls only grew up visiting and playing with him inside the Fort Bonifacio brig and later the Camp Crame detention center.
Capt. Gary Alejano’s aborted Medal of Valor was based on his rescue of a team of soldiers from another unit trapped and under severe threat from enemy combatants in an encounter along the Narciso Ramos Highway, which connects Marawi and Parang to Cotabato. The Medal of Valor is the highest, most prestigious, and most coveted honor given to any member of the Armed Forces of the Philippines for “acts of conspicuous gallantry” and a deed “of personal bravery and self-sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty so conspicuous as to distinguish himself clearly above his comrades in the performance of more than ordinary hazardous service.”
Gary, whom I have come to know well since his detention in 2003, exhibits truly heroic humor and equanimity in the face of the worst possible crises, as I have witnessed when I was arrested and detained with him after the Manila Peninsula stand-off at Camp Crame.
Candidate Alejano ran in the last elections, along with fellow Magdalo partymates in other parts of the country, such as Navy Seal Lt. James Layug, Army Capt. Dante Langkit and Lt. Ace Acedillo, who ran for congressional seats in Taguig, Kalinga, and Cebu, respectively. Even though Magdalo was not accredited as a party despite its track record as a national organization of around 85,000 card carrying members to date, these four gentlemen still had the fortitude to run as independents.
By all accounts, Alejano won in his bid for the mayorship of Sipalay, a city which he has great vision for — a vision that inspired his constituents to come together to vote for him in the hope of freeing their beloved place from the monopoly of the Montilla dynasty that prevents the full development of tourism and mining potentials there.
On election day itself, the camp of the Montillas had already become mournful. Their impending debacle became clearly written on the wall. Eight of 10 “deacons” of a religious sect had joined the campaign of Alejano despite the promise of money and threat of expulsion from their church. Volunteer campaign workers for Alejano had swelled the ranks, and nothing stood in the way of a people’s victory over the old dynasty.
The mood in the other camp only turned for the better when rumor filtered out from their headquarters that they had found the “fix” to deliver the “winning” votes. Alas, as in so many areas of the country, such as in the premier city of Manila, where candidate Lito Atienza is now engaged in a recount of the Hocus-PCOS votes, the issue of manipulated voting machines reared its ugly head.
Alejano has filed a protest with the Commission on Elections, calling for a recount, and is still being asked to fork over P235,000. That is not an amount easy to come by; yet he is determined to push through with the recount to prove the election anomaly — in the interest of future election exercises which would become meaningless if the Hocus-PCOS is allowed to wreak havoc again. I have joined Alejano’s struggle to obtain this manual recount of votes, to prove the Hocus-PCOS fraud and seat the rightful and deserving leader in place.
Contributions to Alejano’s “Election Protest Fund” can be sent directly to Gary Alejano, Samahang Magdalo HQ, 2/F Timog Bldg., Barangay South Triangle, Quezon City. I am also doing the rounds of friends and supporters personally to raise funds for this cause. Please help restore our democracy; let’s each do our share.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/17/2010
When I watched the farcical Senate, with the likes of Joker Arroyo faulting media’s work in the hostage crisis, and read such do-nothing solons criticizing our colleagues Michael Rogas of RMN and the TV crews, I can only thank media for risking life and limb to get the full story or else the tales of the dead hostages and Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza may never have come to light — this, as the highest officials of the land are still trying to cover up their dark motives, siopao predilections, and gross incompetence.
Media need not apologize; the authorities failed to direct the scene in every way. But as I watch these farces, I remember the real struggle of a few good men of idealism and vision, continuing their fight for justice and social change despite the absence of media’s klieg lights: Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, still in unjust detention, and Capt. Gary Alejano, who won the mayorship of Sipalay, Negros Occidental but was Hocus-PCOSed and now fights for a manual recount.
Media should pay more attention to these real struggles, as these people are the ones who can make the difference. In fact, the women behind these warriors are as dedicated and visionary, too: Arlene Trillanes, once a military officer in her own right, and Minnie Alejano, who carried the campaign when Gary was in detention. The public knows much more about Senator Trillanes than they do about Gary Alejano. The latter is a young Marine officer who abandoned the much-coveted Medal of Valor Award almost eight years ago on the day he chose to join the Bagong Katipuneros’ march to Oakwood to make a stand for change by condemning corruption in the military and beyond. In all these years, Alejano’s twin girls only grew up visiting and playing with him inside the Fort Bonifacio brig and later the Camp Crame detention center.
Capt. Gary Alejano’s aborted Medal of Valor was based on his rescue of a team of soldiers from another unit trapped and under severe threat from enemy combatants in an encounter along the Narciso Ramos Highway, which connects Marawi and Parang to Cotabato. The Medal of Valor is the highest, most prestigious, and most coveted honor given to any member of the Armed Forces of the Philippines for “acts of conspicuous gallantry” and a deed “of personal bravery and self-sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty so conspicuous as to distinguish himself clearly above his comrades in the performance of more than ordinary hazardous service.”
Gary, whom I have come to know well since his detention in 2003, exhibits truly heroic humor and equanimity in the face of the worst possible crises, as I have witnessed when I was arrested and detained with him after the Manila Peninsula stand-off at Camp Crame.
Candidate Alejano ran in the last elections, along with fellow Magdalo partymates in other parts of the country, such as Navy Seal Lt. James Layug, Army Capt. Dante Langkit and Lt. Ace Acedillo, who ran for congressional seats in Taguig, Kalinga, and Cebu, respectively. Even though Magdalo was not accredited as a party despite its track record as a national organization of around 85,000 card carrying members to date, these four gentlemen still had the fortitude to run as independents.
By all accounts, Alejano won in his bid for the mayorship of Sipalay, a city which he has great vision for — a vision that inspired his constituents to come together to vote for him in the hope of freeing their beloved place from the monopoly of the Montilla dynasty that prevents the full development of tourism and mining potentials there.
On election day itself, the camp of the Montillas had already become mournful. Their impending debacle became clearly written on the wall. Eight of 10 “deacons” of a religious sect had joined the campaign of Alejano despite the promise of money and threat of expulsion from their church. Volunteer campaign workers for Alejano had swelled the ranks, and nothing stood in the way of a people’s victory over the old dynasty.
The mood in the other camp only turned for the better when rumor filtered out from their headquarters that they had found the “fix” to deliver the “winning” votes. Alas, as in so many areas of the country, such as in the premier city of Manila, where candidate Lito Atienza is now engaged in a recount of the Hocus-PCOS votes, the issue of manipulated voting machines reared its ugly head.
Alejano has filed a protest with the Commission on Elections, calling for a recount, and is still being asked to fork over P235,000. That is not an amount easy to come by; yet he is determined to push through with the recount to prove the election anomaly — in the interest of future election exercises which would become meaningless if the Hocus-PCOS is allowed to wreak havoc again. I have joined Alejano’s struggle to obtain this manual recount of votes, to prove the Hocus-PCOS fraud and seat the rightful and deserving leader in place.
Contributions to Alejano’s “Election Protest Fund” can be sent directly to Gary Alejano, Samahang Magdalo HQ, 2/F Timog Bldg., Barangay South Triangle, Quezon City. I am also doing the rounds of friends and supporters personally to raise funds for this cause. Please help restore our democracy; let’s each do our share.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, September 13, 2010
The DoF’s ‘Foolish-ima’
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/13/2010
As always, great horn-blowing accompanies the latest multi-billion peso borrowing announced by PeNoy Aquino’s Finance chief. Cesar Purisima clearly hopes this will drown out objective and critical analysis of the P44.1 billion in new loans added to the already enormous P4.6-trillion national government debt stock and our total debt of about P7 trillion. One headline even quotes the Hyatt 10 balik-secretary describing the oversubscribed issue as a “landslide vote of confidence,” the “first peso-denominated bond outside the country,” a “milestone,” and “the first time an Asian country conducted a float using its own currency.”
By real honest standards, however, forensic financial analyst Hero Vaswani of the Kilusang Makabansang Ekonomiya explains that there is nothing really great about it. If anything, that huge borrowing is merely evidence that the Philippine economy is unable to generate revenues, and that the government still has to borrow to finance its operations, despite claims of a 7.9-percent GDP growth.
A debt is a debt. Yet Purisima says the peso bond issuance “is the latest development in the (country’s) financing program in support of the government’s proactive management of external liabilities, particularly with respect to reducing its vulnerability to foreign currency risks.”
But isn’t it really just the foreign financial syndicates’ way of avoiding the volatility of the US dollar by tying up a debtor country to an exchange rate for the bond? So far, only the weak and unstable countries, such as Colombia in South America, have become suckers to this scheme of issuing local currency bonds.
National Treasurer Roberto Tan even supported the new peso bond debt, saying it would “enhance the government’s debt investor profile,” despite past examples of investor profiles given to countries such as Greece that have shown the scoring by the financial ratings agencies to be really meaningless.
Even as Purisima boasts that the peso bond issuance was oversubscribed 13 times, we ask: Isn’t this oversubscription just a symptom of the hard times in the western economies? The US is facing an on-going “low intensity depression” and its policymakers have already pumped trillions of dollars into the system, leading to desperation on where to park the overflowing financial assets.
Further, Vaswani explains that the US is lending at practically zero interest; which is why so-called “investors” have started to use this to buy Third World debt earning upwards of 5 percent. This reminds me of the “petrodollars” 40 years ago when US dollars overflowed after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries required oil to be traded only in that currency, as the Middle East crises (of created wars and oil embargoes) exploded oil prices from $15/bbl to almost $90/bbl (adjusted to 2008 dollar values). Trillions of US dollars then had to be recycled by finagling or forcing Third World countries to swallow a lot of un-payable loans.
Purisima is simply doing what all his predecessors have done: Increasing our debt; failing to raise revenues for government; and relying on new debts to finance the growing national budget with its increasing annual deficit-spending. The two months under the PeNoy administration has not brought about new ideas for generating greater revenues without imposing new taxes and other pains onto the public. Hence, the imbroglio over the value-added tax (VAT) on tollways, the raising of MRT fares, and now, the removal of the senior citizens’ VAT exemptions, which came out in the news just last Sept. 9.
Where then is the much-vaunted “anti-corruption dividend,” where savings from cleaning up waste from graft and corruption are supposed to make up for the deficits and fulfill the “no new taxes” pledge from PeNoy’s election campaign?
The plain truth is, the Philippines will never be able to break loose from the tightening strangle of the “debt trap” because every administration since the February 1986 elite counter-revolution (with the sole exception of Erap Estrada) had all been against the national economic development paradigm of Ferdinand Marcos.
After Cory Aquino took over, state revenues and the people’s wealth — as directed by the US State Department and Makati Business Club — were aggressively transferred to the oligarchy through trade liberalization (jumpstarted by Cory and Bobby Tañada’s removal of 3,000 items from tariff protection); privatization and deregulation of strategic industries and public utilities (Meralco, Petron, Napocor, etc.); and reversal of progressive income taxation through the institution of the regressive VAT system.
It went on through Fidel Ramos and peaked under Gloria Arroyo, where Big Business raked in P3 trillion in profits in just nine years!
To stop this bloodletting, the people must wrest power away from the oligarchy and put a genuinely democratic leadership in place. Unless PeNoy undergoes a miraculous transformation and becomes truly Pinoy — no longer for and of the US and the Makati Business Club — Filipinos will have to continue their search for genuine nationalist and patriotic leadership. It could be still by elections, if we can stop the future use of those Hocus-PCOS machines, or it can well be by other means, which may prove feasible when the time comes.
In the meantime, let’s continue to expose what the current Finance secretary is really doing in contracting all these new debts — whether in peso, dollar, euro, or yen. Debts in any currency are just the same old financial foolishness. Right, Mr. Foolish-ima?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http:hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/13/2010
As always, great horn-blowing accompanies the latest multi-billion peso borrowing announced by PeNoy Aquino’s Finance chief. Cesar Purisima clearly hopes this will drown out objective and critical analysis of the P44.1 billion in new loans added to the already enormous P4.6-trillion national government debt stock and our total debt of about P7 trillion. One headline even quotes the Hyatt 10 balik-secretary describing the oversubscribed issue as a “landslide vote of confidence,” the “first peso-denominated bond outside the country,” a “milestone,” and “the first time an Asian country conducted a float using its own currency.”
By real honest standards, however, forensic financial analyst Hero Vaswani of the Kilusang Makabansang Ekonomiya explains that there is nothing really great about it. If anything, that huge borrowing is merely evidence that the Philippine economy is unable to generate revenues, and that the government still has to borrow to finance its operations, despite claims of a 7.9-percent GDP growth.
A debt is a debt. Yet Purisima says the peso bond issuance “is the latest development in the (country’s) financing program in support of the government’s proactive management of external liabilities, particularly with respect to reducing its vulnerability to foreign currency risks.”
But isn’t it really just the foreign financial syndicates’ way of avoiding the volatility of the US dollar by tying up a debtor country to an exchange rate for the bond? So far, only the weak and unstable countries, such as Colombia in South America, have become suckers to this scheme of issuing local currency bonds.
National Treasurer Roberto Tan even supported the new peso bond debt, saying it would “enhance the government’s debt investor profile,” despite past examples of investor profiles given to countries such as Greece that have shown the scoring by the financial ratings agencies to be really meaningless.
Even as Purisima boasts that the peso bond issuance was oversubscribed 13 times, we ask: Isn’t this oversubscription just a symptom of the hard times in the western economies? The US is facing an on-going “low intensity depression” and its policymakers have already pumped trillions of dollars into the system, leading to desperation on where to park the overflowing financial assets.
Further, Vaswani explains that the US is lending at practically zero interest; which is why so-called “investors” have started to use this to buy Third World debt earning upwards of 5 percent. This reminds me of the “petrodollars” 40 years ago when US dollars overflowed after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries required oil to be traded only in that currency, as the Middle East crises (of created wars and oil embargoes) exploded oil prices from $15/bbl to almost $90/bbl (adjusted to 2008 dollar values). Trillions of US dollars then had to be recycled by finagling or forcing Third World countries to swallow a lot of un-payable loans.
Purisima is simply doing what all his predecessors have done: Increasing our debt; failing to raise revenues for government; and relying on new debts to finance the growing national budget with its increasing annual deficit-spending. The two months under the PeNoy administration has not brought about new ideas for generating greater revenues without imposing new taxes and other pains onto the public. Hence, the imbroglio over the value-added tax (VAT) on tollways, the raising of MRT fares, and now, the removal of the senior citizens’ VAT exemptions, which came out in the news just last Sept. 9.
Where then is the much-vaunted “anti-corruption dividend,” where savings from cleaning up waste from graft and corruption are supposed to make up for the deficits and fulfill the “no new taxes” pledge from PeNoy’s election campaign?
The plain truth is, the Philippines will never be able to break loose from the tightening strangle of the “debt trap” because every administration since the February 1986 elite counter-revolution (with the sole exception of Erap Estrada) had all been against the national economic development paradigm of Ferdinand Marcos.
After Cory Aquino took over, state revenues and the people’s wealth — as directed by the US State Department and Makati Business Club — were aggressively transferred to the oligarchy through trade liberalization (jumpstarted by Cory and Bobby Tañada’s removal of 3,000 items from tariff protection); privatization and deregulation of strategic industries and public utilities (Meralco, Petron, Napocor, etc.); and reversal of progressive income taxation through the institution of the regressive VAT system.
It went on through Fidel Ramos and peaked under Gloria Arroyo, where Big Business raked in P3 trillion in profits in just nine years!
To stop this bloodletting, the people must wrest power away from the oligarchy and put a genuinely democratic leadership in place. Unless PeNoy undergoes a miraculous transformation and becomes truly Pinoy — no longer for and of the US and the Makati Business Club — Filipinos will have to continue their search for genuine nationalist and patriotic leadership. It could be still by elections, if we can stop the future use of those Hocus-PCOS machines, or it can well be by other means, which may prove feasible when the time comes.
In the meantime, let’s continue to expose what the current Finance secretary is really doing in contracting all these new debts — whether in peso, dollar, euro, or yen. Debts in any currency are just the same old financial foolishness. Right, Mr. Foolish-ima?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http:hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, September 10, 2010
More 'peace bonds' as poverty rises
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/10/10
Ihe latest poverty survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) from June 25 to 28 tracks a new rise in self-rated poverty — from 43 percent (or 8.1 million families) to 50 percent (or 9.4 million families) — for the first two quarters of 2010. This was the same period that posted a 7.9-percent “growth,” according to the economic managers of Gloria Arroyo and PeNoy Aquino. Worse, food poverty went up, from 31 percent (affecting 5.9 million households) to 38 percent (or 7.2 million households).
Much of this increase in poverty in the rural areas, especially in Mindanao, makes food poverty or hunger particularly troublesome in light of the PeNoy government’s solution, which is to get identified poor families queuing for P1,400 monthly while denying the National Food Authority (NFA) any fund for price support to farmers who form a big part of the poor. All these as the business headlines trumpet PeNoy’s so-called Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, with “Discount bonds to fund PPP” and “Taipans queuing for PPPs.”
The concept of “discount bonds” is the same as the “zero coupon” bonds at the heart of the Code-NGO PeaceBonds infamy, which SGV man Cesar Purisima, now at the Department of Finance, explained as being “… so-called because they do not pay interest but are sold at a deep discount and later redeemed at full face value...”
Actually, the interest is all paid, compounded at that, at the end of the maturity period. So it turns out to be a whopping amount, where government which got, as in the case of the PeaceBonds, say, P10 billion in 2001 (when the bonds were issued) will have to pay an amount such as P35 billion upon maturity (in 2011).
The discussion on the PPP zero coupon bond is not clear at this point because Purisima and Butch Abad are still throwing many figures around — from a low of P15 billion to a high of P200 billion (in projects), and even up to P400 billion by 2013. Then, as Purisima says that these bonds will be sold to “pension funds,” does this mean the Government Service Insurance System and the Social Security System? They have not explained as yet.
Speaking of these pension funds, we have been wondering why Franklin Drilon is raising a howl at this time when the high salaries and benefit packages of government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) have long been known and when, at most, the guilt would only be “insider trading.” Is there a hidden agenda in the timing of these exposés? Some are wary that these may just be a prelude to a new drive to “privatize” the pension funds that started with the financial mafia’s appointment of Vitaliano Nañagas in 2001, who was ousted when the unions opposed it.
Then, in explaining the bonds to be used in the PPPs, Purisima referred to countries with similar programs, such as Indonesia and India; but it only goes to show that these schemes are being pushed by Finance. Reports also say that proceeds of the bonds will “become part of a fund the private sector can tap for PPP projects” (with none for farmers’ rice production, as usual). The suspicious part is that the bonds would provide “equity participation or financing guarantees for private infrastructure projects.” In addition, Purisima, Abad, and the business chambers agree that the PPP projects will be on infrastructure, power generation (and transmission, water supply, airport development, and the like. So it will still be the same set-up that has gotten taxpayers into so much financial burden, paying for subsidies to rich corporations.
The energy and electricity sector is where the issue of privatization and undue advantage, given to corporations over the welfare of the people, is most highlighted. As in the MRT fare increase issue, taxpayers and electricity consumers are being made to pay for the next 25 years P932 billion worth of debts, as well as stranded costs left behind by privatization, where the favored foreign and local oligarchs already got a profit windfall by acquiring state assets cleaned of debts, aside from a fuel supply subsidy and the onerous take-or-pay provisions in contracts.
And as there is now a Facebook page called “Protest against Meralco Electricity Price Hike” with 50,000 members, those who are members of that social networking site should therefore support this page by swelling its ranks to millions to show the nation’s outrage. This is but one of the many pro-Big Business policies PeNoy and the Yellows are adopting that’s hurting every Filipino. Let’s take action to demand that only actions to save the public and remedy this injustice are taken: Take back the public utility assets to pay off whatever debts through generated profits. The past decade alone, by Joey Salceda’s own admission, saw these Big Business conglomerates’ earnings at a staggering P3 trillion while the total national debt stood at P4.42 trillion by the end of 2009!
Lastly, let me digress: DILG Undersecretary Rico Puno says he is willing to “take a bullet for the President,” so why didn’t he take the fall for his President when the latter was compelled to “take responsibility” for the recent hostage tragedy? Meantime, given this move, what penance is PeNoy offering? Jesse Robredo will no longer be submitted to the Commission on Appointments, so is PeNoy choosing his shooting buddy over a Ramon Magsaysay awardee? Puno, in defending his appointment, says that Arroyo even appointed her hairdresser and gardener. So Puno now admits that he’s on that level too.
Hans Palacios sent us this text to sum it all up: “It’s the pot calling the kettle black. Congress is having trouble impeaching the Ombudsman because congressmen are forced to go against one of their own kind.” Well, so is PeNoy the same as Arroyo.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/10/10
Ihe latest poverty survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) from June 25 to 28 tracks a new rise in self-rated poverty — from 43 percent (or 8.1 million families) to 50 percent (or 9.4 million families) — for the first two quarters of 2010. This was the same period that posted a 7.9-percent “growth,” according to the economic managers of Gloria Arroyo and PeNoy Aquino. Worse, food poverty went up, from 31 percent (affecting 5.9 million households) to 38 percent (or 7.2 million households).
Much of this increase in poverty in the rural areas, especially in Mindanao, makes food poverty or hunger particularly troublesome in light of the PeNoy government’s solution, which is to get identified poor families queuing for P1,400 monthly while denying the National Food Authority (NFA) any fund for price support to farmers who form a big part of the poor. All these as the business headlines trumpet PeNoy’s so-called Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, with “Discount bonds to fund PPP” and “Taipans queuing for PPPs.”
The concept of “discount bonds” is the same as the “zero coupon” bonds at the heart of the Code-NGO PeaceBonds infamy, which SGV man Cesar Purisima, now at the Department of Finance, explained as being “… so-called because they do not pay interest but are sold at a deep discount and later redeemed at full face value...”
Actually, the interest is all paid, compounded at that, at the end of the maturity period. So it turns out to be a whopping amount, where government which got, as in the case of the PeaceBonds, say, P10 billion in 2001 (when the bonds were issued) will have to pay an amount such as P35 billion upon maturity (in 2011).
The discussion on the PPP zero coupon bond is not clear at this point because Purisima and Butch Abad are still throwing many figures around — from a low of P15 billion to a high of P200 billion (in projects), and even up to P400 billion by 2013. Then, as Purisima says that these bonds will be sold to “pension funds,” does this mean the Government Service Insurance System and the Social Security System? They have not explained as yet.
Speaking of these pension funds, we have been wondering why Franklin Drilon is raising a howl at this time when the high salaries and benefit packages of government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) have long been known and when, at most, the guilt would only be “insider trading.” Is there a hidden agenda in the timing of these exposés? Some are wary that these may just be a prelude to a new drive to “privatize” the pension funds that started with the financial mafia’s appointment of Vitaliano Nañagas in 2001, who was ousted when the unions opposed it.
Then, in explaining the bonds to be used in the PPPs, Purisima referred to countries with similar programs, such as Indonesia and India; but it only goes to show that these schemes are being pushed by Finance. Reports also say that proceeds of the bonds will “become part of a fund the private sector can tap for PPP projects” (with none for farmers’ rice production, as usual). The suspicious part is that the bonds would provide “equity participation or financing guarantees for private infrastructure projects.” In addition, Purisima, Abad, and the business chambers agree that the PPP projects will be on infrastructure, power generation (and transmission, water supply, airport development, and the like. So it will still be the same set-up that has gotten taxpayers into so much financial burden, paying for subsidies to rich corporations.
The energy and electricity sector is where the issue of privatization and undue advantage, given to corporations over the welfare of the people, is most highlighted. As in the MRT fare increase issue, taxpayers and electricity consumers are being made to pay for the next 25 years P932 billion worth of debts, as well as stranded costs left behind by privatization, where the favored foreign and local oligarchs already got a profit windfall by acquiring state assets cleaned of debts, aside from a fuel supply subsidy and the onerous take-or-pay provisions in contracts.
And as there is now a Facebook page called “Protest against Meralco Electricity Price Hike” with 50,000 members, those who are members of that social networking site should therefore support this page by swelling its ranks to millions to show the nation’s outrage. This is but one of the many pro-Big Business policies PeNoy and the Yellows are adopting that’s hurting every Filipino. Let’s take action to demand that only actions to save the public and remedy this injustice are taken: Take back the public utility assets to pay off whatever debts through generated profits. The past decade alone, by Joey Salceda’s own admission, saw these Big Business conglomerates’ earnings at a staggering P3 trillion while the total national debt stood at P4.42 trillion by the end of 2009!
Lastly, let me digress: DILG Undersecretary Rico Puno says he is willing to “take a bullet for the President,” so why didn’t he take the fall for his President when the latter was compelled to “take responsibility” for the recent hostage tragedy? Meantime, given this move, what penance is PeNoy offering? Jesse Robredo will no longer be submitted to the Commission on Appointments, so is PeNoy choosing his shooting buddy over a Ramon Magsaysay awardee? Puno, in defending his appointment, says that Arroyo even appointed her hairdresser and gardener. So Puno now admits that he’s on that level too.
Hans Palacios sent us this text to sum it all up: “It’s the pot calling the kettle black. Congress is having trouble impeaching the Ombudsman because congressmen are forced to go against one of their own kind.” Well, so is PeNoy the same as Arroyo.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, September 6, 2010
PeNoy: P8B for the poor, P35B for bankers
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/06/2010
Dinky Soliman, PeNoy Aquino’s Social Welfare secretary, trumpets her P8-billion cash dole-out for the poor. That’s measly compared to the P35 billion Soliman’s CodeNGO is handing out to the bankers this year through the payback to her group’s so-called PeaceBonds.
Just think: The bankers are going to get four times more than the poor. And we don’t even know if all of this P8-billion dole-out will really go to the intended recipients, given the notoriety of the PeNoy administration’s utter lack of control. Stated simply, this is my way of telling Soliman to cut the crap about her and her government’s fictitious “pro-poor” claims. Her NGO work had always been masked subversion projects of the Western funding agencies — thus, explaining why her NGO comrades are so well taken care of by such bodies as the Kennedy School of Government and the Cory Aquino foundations of the oligarchs.
As we speak, PeNoy is already increasing the number of financial rip-offs to benefit Big Business through new projects such as the MRT and the new South Expressway extensions, water privatization, power privatization (which has given us the highest power rates in Asia), plus giving tollway operators more leeway to exact exorbitant fees. All these are being contracted under PeNoy’s Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, which will have P15 billion in funding cum dole-out for the big, favored corporations — again outstripping the dole-out for the poor.
Already, under this PPP arrangement, three new tollways are being planned, as well as, tourism infrastructure to be mapped out by Ayala man and Tourism Secretary Bertie Lim. In all, the P35-billion CodeNGO pay-off and the P15-billion PPP projects total to an astounding P50-billion “social welfare” for Big Business!
But even as PeNoy gives this P50-billion subsidy to the bankers and Big Business, his government’s pencil-pushers under Butch Abad, such as the Treasury boss, did not allocate a single centavo for the National Food Authority (NFA), under the Department of Agriculture’s budget. Without this, the NFA will not be able to purchase rice from our millions of farmers. In short, there will be no subsidy at all, which will place them at the mercy of unscrupulous traders and middle men, thus, drowning us in the deluge of imports from countries such as Vietnam, India, and China that subsidize their own farmers. I really wonder if NFA chief Lito Banayo will be able to stomach this as he claims to be pro-poor and a nationalist ever since his college and activist days.
In the meantime, behind the veneer of brooking “no corruption” is this reality: PeNoy now bloats the President’s pork barrel from P800 million to P1 billion and keeps his P500-million intelligence fund, which he earlier vowed to forego. PeNoy also did not reduce his travel budget as he said he would.
Following his lead, Malacañang has now increased its contingent fund under the new budget and listed this under the Special Purpose Fund which only the President can draw from. In turn, budgets for Environment and Health were reduced. Funds such as the P18.5 billion for water resources development and flood control and P40 billion for health services were slashed to P14.5 billion and P38.6 billion respectively.
Yet the palakasan in favor of the Ateneo-UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) club, nurtured by the Jesuits Delaney and Intengan, is ever present. Why, the Atenean Butch Abad has already allocated P34.3 billion (up from the previous year’s P15.4 billion) to UPSCAn Dinky Soliman.
All this should be lessons to the wide-eyed believers of PeNoy and the Yellow movement to snap out of their trance. This call is made to such Yellow supporters as Reyn Barnido, who has issued an open letter to PeNoy on the Internet that takes off from the hostage fiasco, saying in part: “This is not anymore about failing to handle the hostage-taking as much as this is about fulfilling the promises of your oath-taking… This is not about a singular madman shooting bullets up and down; this is about an orgy of fools shooting lies left and right... not anymore about the negotiators’ inefficiency to convince a police officer to surrender, but the government’s incapacity to comfort a nation… We don’t deserve this, Sir. This is not the covenant we entered into during your oath-taking… I grew up in the shadows of the Abads, Soliman, Deles… Do not take their analysis of society at face value for theirs is a construct designed to fuel a protest movement, not manage a large bureaucracy… Believe it or not, your cheerers may have become cynics, but they are still your companions in this journey. I, for one, will not abandon you Mr. President.”
Apparently, Barnido still thinks that the crisis bedeviling his former mentors and PeNoy himself is just a crisis of incompetence, where one is sentimentally loyal even to the failed and foolish, hoping they will learn. Well, he and his youngish ilk are the ones who have a lot to learn!
PeNoy’s budget and programs, foisted unto us by the evil powers that Barnido has been taught in the Ateneo not to see, are the best eye openers. These evil powers, the money masters to whom the Jesuits genuflect, are anti-poor and anti-human, on top of being pro-Big Business. Only when he awakens to how he was inveigled to help install a puppet that has brought us to the deepest nadir which the Yellow movement is capable of can he truly help this nation as a “Man for Others,” and not as a “Man for the Money Masters.”
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/06/2010
Dinky Soliman, PeNoy Aquino’s Social Welfare secretary, trumpets her P8-billion cash dole-out for the poor. That’s measly compared to the P35 billion Soliman’s CodeNGO is handing out to the bankers this year through the payback to her group’s so-called PeaceBonds.
Just think: The bankers are going to get four times more than the poor. And we don’t even know if all of this P8-billion dole-out will really go to the intended recipients, given the notoriety of the PeNoy administration’s utter lack of control. Stated simply, this is my way of telling Soliman to cut the crap about her and her government’s fictitious “pro-poor” claims. Her NGO work had always been masked subversion projects of the Western funding agencies — thus, explaining why her NGO comrades are so well taken care of by such bodies as the Kennedy School of Government and the Cory Aquino foundations of the oligarchs.
As we speak, PeNoy is already increasing the number of financial rip-offs to benefit Big Business through new projects such as the MRT and the new South Expressway extensions, water privatization, power privatization (which has given us the highest power rates in Asia), plus giving tollway operators more leeway to exact exorbitant fees. All these are being contracted under PeNoy’s Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, which will have P15 billion in funding cum dole-out for the big, favored corporations — again outstripping the dole-out for the poor.
Already, under this PPP arrangement, three new tollways are being planned, as well as, tourism infrastructure to be mapped out by Ayala man and Tourism Secretary Bertie Lim. In all, the P35-billion CodeNGO pay-off and the P15-billion PPP projects total to an astounding P50-billion “social welfare” for Big Business!
But even as PeNoy gives this P50-billion subsidy to the bankers and Big Business, his government’s pencil-pushers under Butch Abad, such as the Treasury boss, did not allocate a single centavo for the National Food Authority (NFA), under the Department of Agriculture’s budget. Without this, the NFA will not be able to purchase rice from our millions of farmers. In short, there will be no subsidy at all, which will place them at the mercy of unscrupulous traders and middle men, thus, drowning us in the deluge of imports from countries such as Vietnam, India, and China that subsidize their own farmers. I really wonder if NFA chief Lito Banayo will be able to stomach this as he claims to be pro-poor and a nationalist ever since his college and activist days.
In the meantime, behind the veneer of brooking “no corruption” is this reality: PeNoy now bloats the President’s pork barrel from P800 million to P1 billion and keeps his P500-million intelligence fund, which he earlier vowed to forego. PeNoy also did not reduce his travel budget as he said he would.
Following his lead, Malacañang has now increased its contingent fund under the new budget and listed this under the Special Purpose Fund which only the President can draw from. In turn, budgets for Environment and Health were reduced. Funds such as the P18.5 billion for water resources development and flood control and P40 billion for health services were slashed to P14.5 billion and P38.6 billion respectively.
Yet the palakasan in favor of the Ateneo-UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) club, nurtured by the Jesuits Delaney and Intengan, is ever present. Why, the Atenean Butch Abad has already allocated P34.3 billion (up from the previous year’s P15.4 billion) to UPSCAn Dinky Soliman.
All this should be lessons to the wide-eyed believers of PeNoy and the Yellow movement to snap out of their trance. This call is made to such Yellow supporters as Reyn Barnido, who has issued an open letter to PeNoy on the Internet that takes off from the hostage fiasco, saying in part: “This is not anymore about failing to handle the hostage-taking as much as this is about fulfilling the promises of your oath-taking… This is not about a singular madman shooting bullets up and down; this is about an orgy of fools shooting lies left and right... not anymore about the negotiators’ inefficiency to convince a police officer to surrender, but the government’s incapacity to comfort a nation… We don’t deserve this, Sir. This is not the covenant we entered into during your oath-taking… I grew up in the shadows of the Abads, Soliman, Deles… Do not take their analysis of society at face value for theirs is a construct designed to fuel a protest movement, not manage a large bureaucracy… Believe it or not, your cheerers may have become cynics, but they are still your companions in this journey. I, for one, will not abandon you Mr. President.”
Apparently, Barnido still thinks that the crisis bedeviling his former mentors and PeNoy himself is just a crisis of incompetence, where one is sentimentally loyal even to the failed and foolish, hoping they will learn. Well, he and his youngish ilk are the ones who have a lot to learn!
PeNoy’s budget and programs, foisted unto us by the evil powers that Barnido has been taught in the Ateneo not to see, are the best eye openers. These evil powers, the money masters to whom the Jesuits genuflect, are anti-poor and anti-human, on top of being pro-Big Business. Only when he awakens to how he was inveigled to help install a puppet that has brought us to the deepest nadir which the Yellow movement is capable of can he truly help this nation as a “Man for Others,” and not as a “Man for the Money Masters.”
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, September 3, 2010
Reverse the policy of servitude
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/03/2010
Around five to 10 percent of the messages I get these days run counter to the tide of remorse that most Filipinos have over the massive hostile reaction of the Hong Kong people in the wake of the deadly hostage disaster — feelings which are being stoked by the endless tale of errors of the Philippine government. One text from Michi says the Chinese are already going overboard, as exemplified by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s allegation that a Hong Kong immigration officer threw his passport back at him. Danny echoes the same but with more pain: “Masyado na tayong minamaliit” (We are being belittled too much), as news of Pinay domestics being harassed come in. Despite movie idol Jackie Chan’s efforts to dampen the burning rage of his countrymen, attempts such as these only douse more fuel to the fire.
One can sympathize with the Hong Kong people yet think that they might be overdoing it; but then, as more developments in the Philippines unfold, the situation only gets worse. The “Kodak-an” of uniformed policemen in front of the bullet-riddled bus, posing as if it were a tourist attraction, has by now circulated massively on the Internet, revealing a penchant for kababawan that treats the tragic crime so lightly, which can only rekindle heated emotions that could have otherwise started simmering down. Another picture that has a bevy of white uniformed schoolgirls also posing before the hostaged bus naturally elicited a caption that reads, “One of these bitches could be your domestic helper next.” Indeed, these things might be a fun topic among Pinoy barkadas; but they are weird and even macabre. So I can’t really blame the Hong Kong people.
On our end, the pain from the shame is growing too, especially as we sense the helpless situation of our domestic helpers in Hong Kong, where some of its citizens are still unforgiving, and understandably so, despite the Philippine public and officialdom’s acts of contrition. I had actually begun to feel that the Chinese protested unnecessarily about the Philippine flag being draped on Mendoza’s coffin; but when I read the transcript of the final interview of RMN (aired over GNN) with Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza, who at that point threatened to shoot “even the small ones” among his hostages, I changed my mind. Mendoza, of course, was no longer in his right mind; but for anyone, and a police officer at that, to consciously target children is so cowardly (and unbecoming of a Batangueño). Imagine the rage of those from Hong Kong who will get to read it.
Truly, the thing that makes this recent imbroglio testier is that around 200,000 Filipinos work as domestic helpers (DHs) in Hong Kong. Filipino DHs are preferred, though they cost more, while Filipino DHs prefer to work there because of proximity. When the people of Hong Kong demanded compensation for the victims in their recent rally, some Filipino bloggers made the retort that they should also compensate Filipinas who were wronged. But the fact is, Hong Kong’s laws are clear and fair. Filipino domestics have been permitted to stage rallies in the past to demand better wages and benefits. Still, we wouldn’t be in this situation if our countrymen didn’t have to leave their home country by the hundreds of thousands to find work outside.
Marcos was the last Filipino leader to have set his eyes on industrializing the nation to ensure sufficient domestic employment. If he had succeeded with his “Eleven Industrial Projects,” which included, among others, the copper and aluminum smelters, the integrated steel mill, and the centerpiece Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The US ensured, through systematic sabotage, that none of these projects would take off. Through Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, it was able to create turmoil by using the unsuspecting middle-class and ambitious military officers to stage a coup that put the nail on the coffin of Marcos’ dream.
Corazon Aquino, with Joker Arroyo, became instrumental in dismantling the foundations of Philippine industrialization by deconstructing the independent energy sector; privatizing state assets crucial to developing a sovereign nation; and turning the Philippines into a servant country.
The humiliation of Filipinos did not start with the Hong Thai hostage fiasco and won’t end with it. We recall American radio shock jock Howard Stern calling Filipinos “monkeys;” the case of Flor Contemplacion who was executed in Singapore for killing her fellow domestic, with the Philippines unable to do anything to save her; and how dictionaries of certain countries define a Filipina as a “domestic servant; someone who performs non-essential auxiliary tasks.”
If Filipinos should be angry at anyone or any group for this humiliation and apparently hopeless future as unwitting “servants of the world” (a concept that is even promoted by some local religious groups, idealizing “servant leadership” as against “visionary leadership”), it should be at the Philippine social and political leaders who have sold this nation for slavery.
What happened in the fall of Marcos’ vision of industrialization was nothing less than a counter-revolution of historic proportions. Thus, social conditions will require an equally great, revolutionary effort to reverse our dependency and mendicant economy. It took 24 years of the elite Yellow counter-revolution to entrench the Yellow movement (after a near upset by the masa in the election of Estrada); but now under the last Aquino, the nation has begun to understand and reject them.
We must return to the original colors of the revolution of Bonifacio, Mabini and Rizal. The present crop in the Senate and Congress is hopelessly corrupted. Fortunately, there are possibilities in the margins of the present power structure, such as Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada (if he expands on his father’s masa focus), and maybe Jojo Binay if he frees himself of his chains to the Yellows (and the Aquinos) and starts to oppose the Big Business cabals.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http: hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/03/2010
Around five to 10 percent of the messages I get these days run counter to the tide of remorse that most Filipinos have over the massive hostile reaction of the Hong Kong people in the wake of the deadly hostage disaster — feelings which are being stoked by the endless tale of errors of the Philippine government. One text from Michi says the Chinese are already going overboard, as exemplified by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s allegation that a Hong Kong immigration officer threw his passport back at him. Danny echoes the same but with more pain: “Masyado na tayong minamaliit” (We are being belittled too much), as news of Pinay domestics being harassed come in. Despite movie idol Jackie Chan’s efforts to dampen the burning rage of his countrymen, attempts such as these only douse more fuel to the fire.
One can sympathize with the Hong Kong people yet think that they might be overdoing it; but then, as more developments in the Philippines unfold, the situation only gets worse. The “Kodak-an” of uniformed policemen in front of the bullet-riddled bus, posing as if it were a tourist attraction, has by now circulated massively on the Internet, revealing a penchant for kababawan that treats the tragic crime so lightly, which can only rekindle heated emotions that could have otherwise started simmering down. Another picture that has a bevy of white uniformed schoolgirls also posing before the hostaged bus naturally elicited a caption that reads, “One of these bitches could be your domestic helper next.” Indeed, these things might be a fun topic among Pinoy barkadas; but they are weird and even macabre. So I can’t really blame the Hong Kong people.
On our end, the pain from the shame is growing too, especially as we sense the helpless situation of our domestic helpers in Hong Kong, where some of its citizens are still unforgiving, and understandably so, despite the Philippine public and officialdom’s acts of contrition. I had actually begun to feel that the Chinese protested unnecessarily about the Philippine flag being draped on Mendoza’s coffin; but when I read the transcript of the final interview of RMN (aired over GNN) with Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza, who at that point threatened to shoot “even the small ones” among his hostages, I changed my mind. Mendoza, of course, was no longer in his right mind; but for anyone, and a police officer at that, to consciously target children is so cowardly (and unbecoming of a Batangueño). Imagine the rage of those from Hong Kong who will get to read it.
Truly, the thing that makes this recent imbroglio testier is that around 200,000 Filipinos work as domestic helpers (DHs) in Hong Kong. Filipino DHs are preferred, though they cost more, while Filipino DHs prefer to work there because of proximity. When the people of Hong Kong demanded compensation for the victims in their recent rally, some Filipino bloggers made the retort that they should also compensate Filipinas who were wronged. But the fact is, Hong Kong’s laws are clear and fair. Filipino domestics have been permitted to stage rallies in the past to demand better wages and benefits. Still, we wouldn’t be in this situation if our countrymen didn’t have to leave their home country by the hundreds of thousands to find work outside.
Marcos was the last Filipino leader to have set his eyes on industrializing the nation to ensure sufficient domestic employment. If he had succeeded with his “Eleven Industrial Projects,” which included, among others, the copper and aluminum smelters, the integrated steel mill, and the centerpiece Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The US ensured, through systematic sabotage, that none of these projects would take off. Through Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, it was able to create turmoil by using the unsuspecting middle-class and ambitious military officers to stage a coup that put the nail on the coffin of Marcos’ dream.
Corazon Aquino, with Joker Arroyo, became instrumental in dismantling the foundations of Philippine industrialization by deconstructing the independent energy sector; privatizing state assets crucial to developing a sovereign nation; and turning the Philippines into a servant country.
The humiliation of Filipinos did not start with the Hong Thai hostage fiasco and won’t end with it. We recall American radio shock jock Howard Stern calling Filipinos “monkeys;” the case of Flor Contemplacion who was executed in Singapore for killing her fellow domestic, with the Philippines unable to do anything to save her; and how dictionaries of certain countries define a Filipina as a “domestic servant; someone who performs non-essential auxiliary tasks.”
If Filipinos should be angry at anyone or any group for this humiliation and apparently hopeless future as unwitting “servants of the world” (a concept that is even promoted by some local religious groups, idealizing “servant leadership” as against “visionary leadership”), it should be at the Philippine social and political leaders who have sold this nation for slavery.
What happened in the fall of Marcos’ vision of industrialization was nothing less than a counter-revolution of historic proportions. Thus, social conditions will require an equally great, revolutionary effort to reverse our dependency and mendicant economy. It took 24 years of the elite Yellow counter-revolution to entrench the Yellow movement (after a near upset by the masa in the election of Estrada); but now under the last Aquino, the nation has begun to understand and reject them.
We must return to the original colors of the revolution of Bonifacio, Mabini and Rizal. The present crop in the Senate and Congress is hopelessly corrupted. Fortunately, there are possibilities in the margins of the present power structure, such as Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada (if he expands on his father’s masa focus), and maybe Jojo Binay if he frees himself of his chains to the Yellows (and the Aquinos) and starts to oppose the Big Business cabals.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http: hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
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