Boxing up, education KO

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/22/2006



Exuberant news of Pacquiao’s victory dominated the headlines the past days, but in one Internet newspaper edition the Department of Labor and Employment Bureau of Women and Minors report on out-of-school working children betrays the irony and tragedy of the Philippine situation: 748,000 Filipino children ten to fourteen years old and 132,000 five to 9 years old are out of school and working in farms and factories. That’s a lot of uneducated youth to recruit future boxers or from which aspiring and maybe toothless future billiard champs can be groomed.

The day after the Pacquiao headlines came another SWS survey result on the economy came out reporting that: the so-called economic growth of the Philippines is not trickling down to the masses of the poor. That is a gross understatement. Economic growth is not only not trickling down, it is in fact sucking up what little surplus the Filipinos masses and middle class had before Gloria Arroyo grabbed power in 2001 and cheated in the 2004 elections to install the present plutocratic system. What is being sucked out of the people is going to Big Business backing Gloria.

We have ceaselessly explained that this is the real result of Edsa Dos and the 2004 elections cheating - the abortion and inversion of genuine popular political and economic democracy. Gloria’s power grab represents a counter-revolution by the foreign and local oligarchs against Philippine society’s democratic evolution. The political embodiment of this counter-revolution is: the overturn of the popular will in 2001 by the old elite represented by the Ayala-Aboitiz-Lopez-Rason et al combine with Gloria and the corrupt police-military bureaucracy.

Legislation and executive consummation of the oligarchs’ counter-revolution against the people are highlighted by: Comelec chairman Benipayo’s 3.5-M addition to the voter’s registration list between February 2001 and 2002, rigged 2001 May elections, the lame duck Congress passage of the EPIRA giving foreign (Mirant) and local (Lopez, Aboitiz, et al) private electricity companies free rein on power rates and to charge on unused electricity; increases in water, telecom and toll rates for Ayala, Pangilinan, Lopez and foreign partners, the E-RVAT, all resulting in the oppressive exactions on the people.

A handful of foreign and local corporations raked in windfall profits the past five years, on top of which is the bankrupt American company Mirant which recovered on its $ 5-B profit in the Philippines due to the EPIRA, followed by the other electricity IPPs and distributors, oil, telecom, and international and local banking companies. These “Big Business” have seen their profits jump every year by rates of 30% to over 100%, Mirant was reported to have earned 98% or so gross profit in 2004 in one of its several subsidiaries!

A hole in the Filipinos’ pockets is the RVAT, sucking over P 58-B additional tax for Gloria and the IMF-WB, ADB, international and local banks. That money could have circulated in the local economy and fueled retail, marketing, manufacturing and agriculture. Instead, people have no money to buy goods they need and spend some for leisure. A practical measure is the market meat vendors who now complain that sales are down by two- thirds and they’re forced to sell half or one-fourth kilo to customers where before the minimum was one-kilo.

The stock market is up and so is the Peso, but obviously none of these developments mean any improvement to the ordinary Filipino. The main beneficiaries of the rise in the stock market are unproductive foreign financial speculators siphoning the local concentration of wealth in the corporations listed in the stock market, while bankers and cohorts laugh all the way to their own banks shorting the currency. The biggest inflow of dollars is not only the OFW money but dollar borrowings of banks to use in speculating in the stock and currency markets.

Maintaining the present exploitative and oppressive system is a problem of Gloria and the ruling class today. It is inevitable that not only the masa but even the middle class and the legitimate civil service and public security and defense bureaucracy (the police and military) will feel the crushing economic hardships. To forestall any righteous action of the people the oppressive order will be maintained through distraction of the people from their pains and sorrows with celebrity or gladiator entertainment or through fascism courtesy of the corrupt PNP and AFP generals.

The celebrity and gladiator spectacles are political, like the coming rigged elections that will be full of sound and fury signifying nothing, or cinema and sports like the latest James Bond movie or the Pacquiao and Ronnie “Calamba” Alcano spectacles. The sham of the next election is already in place with the worse padding of the voter’s list in Philippine history and the farcical “unity ticket” Gloria is foisting on the people with the Mike Defensor-Angara-Ramos forces senatorial slate. Christian and Winnie Monsod’s One Voice, and Jesuit Bernas will certainly be happy to support the comedy.

The Pacquiao-Education KO juxtaposition is a perfect portrait of the sorry situation the country is in while the Mike Defensor-Angara-Ramos as alliance for “unity” a quaint depiction of the meaninfless electoral politics of the times. Pity Malaysia, they have no boxing or billiard champ, only a Malaysian astronaut training now to join the international space station – kawawa naman ang Malaysia, magaling ang Pilipinas ni Gloria!