...and the winner is

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/1/2005



A stream of Philippine corporate profits reports of whopping profits came out: July 26, Petron reports 70% increase in profits to P 2.3B in the first half of 2005; July 27, Manila Water of the Ayalas says it posted 52% in profit hike to P 986-M; on the 28th it is reported that Aboitiz Equities upped its first quarter profits by 40% and on the same day Meralco reported profits “soaring” 66% in the 2nd quarter on higher rates. If corporate profits could be equated to improving people’s welfare there should be jubilation, but there’s none. Why?

The Philippine corporate elite is soaring in profits, but inversely the people are clearly having a harder and harder life, with more taxes, more political confusion, a shrinking peso, unemployment hitting an all time high of 20% (among the highest since the Second World War). The same week that these corporate bonanzas were announced, the 95th Anniversary of the Philippine Tuberculosis Society was commemorated. An editorial said of tuberculosis: “….it is not just a medical problem. It is also a socio-economic problem. It traps 40% of our country’s population today in a vicious cycle of poverty and disease.”

Statistics show that at least 77 Filipinos die each day of TB. The only thing wrong about the editorial is that is identifies TB as the trap because it is not, it is the socio-economic conditions that is the trap. In the contrasts between corporate profits and the people’s socio-economic conditiions, a tale of two cities arises: as corporatocracy getting richer, and a population. Increasingly poorer. It is obvious that in the Philippines the more the big corporations profit the harder the life of the people becomes, because we have parasitic big corporations that suck on the people’s life blood to make profit instead of being engaged in real procuctive enterprise.

How did these huge Philippine corporations get their indecent profits? Petron is thriving on the privatization and deregulation environment where oil prices cannot be checked by the public. If it were publicly owned today as it was during Marcos’ time all that profit could be used for the public good. Petron claims its exports that generated the profits, but other oil companies are also reporting huge jump in profits. Even public ownership Petron could export anyway. Water rates rising up to 800% or more over the years with MWSS privatization and deregulation, benefiting Ayala and its foreign partner’s Manila Water immensely.

I used to pay a P 350.00 a month for water. Manila Water came to our neighborhood refitting connections with new meters, bills shot up ten to twenty times. I refused to have my meter changed, but one the Manila Water people bamboozled our maid to enter and change the meter. I discovered the sinister feat only when I got my next month’s bill which went up to P 5,000.00. I have no swimming pool! I started turning off the main valve and allowed for only three hours of inflow. The bill didn’t go down. The meter cheats. All these because Jaime Zobel danced at Edsa Dos!

I have lodged three complaints with complaint No. 24842 and there has been no visit to my house by the Manila Water representative. I have a tubero looking into my piping, but no leak could cause the sky high bill when I have already been turning off the main valve to the meter! Their bill also has a “sewer and environmental” charge of P 400.00 when I see no such service from them. Meralco’s 66% new profits comes from the old RORB being raised from just around 5%, then to 8%, then to 12% and then to 15.8% after the Epira Law was passed by the Edsa Dos congress in June 2001.

Aboitiz Equities is enjoying a 40% windfall from the transfer of Landbank’s P 19-B to Aboitizes’ Union Bank, in return for their support of Erap’s impeachment and the massive Cebu 2004 electoral fraud. Public power assets are also being transferred to them from the NPC privatization for a few paeans to GMA. No wonder the Aboitiz are paying for full page ads calling for GMA’s retention. No wonder the corpor-RATS want Noli pr Driloink, or anyone who can be just another Gloria for a few more years until similarly discredited.

The loser in the country’s current chaos is clearly the people; but discerning the winner takes more perspicacity. Is it Gloria because she’s bought time or the opposition because she’s a goner? Others suggest a win-win, by changing from presidential to parliament and federal system, or fighting corruption. Swiss and Germans fund federalist advocacy, IMF and USAID anti-corruption and “privatization, deregulation” crusades; we have shown that these won’t change things. While chaos and noise reign the corpotatocracy is laughing all the way to their banks!

Abraham Licoln warned: “…Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth of the nation is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.” More ominous was Mussolini” “"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

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