Chavez, Faeldon and hope

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/28/2005



Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government has reported 9% growth of their economy the past year. Fidel Castro in Cuba is reporting an 11.9% growth rate for its economy. Krichner’s Argentina’s growth is hovering between 8 and 10%. All these countries have been the “bad boys” of Latin America and the headaches of Bush and Pat Robertson, but they’re serving the development needs of their country pretty well and standing up to the exploitation of the Paris Club and IMF-WB sharks very well, outwitting the Shylocks and turning the tables on them.

The Philippines, often compared with the Latin American countries because of its history and culture being also the only Catholic country in Asia, the Arroyo regime can only hope for the best of 5% but more likely merely around 4.5% given the fall in this growth the last quarter. October growth was a dismal 4.1% according to government data itself, and the November-December consumer sales which make up the bulk of the last quarter spurt is proving to be a disaster. Asia will have average of 7.2% growth. Senator Aquilino Pimentel has joined the chorus warning of worse times to come.

Pimentel disclosed in a Tribune report that holiday season sales this year have slumped and taking off from this warns Gloria not to push the 2% additional EVAT in February which has a “high probability of backfiring”; i.e. government may find revenues decreasing instead as consumers recoil from spending. Actually, we had warned months ago in this column about this and we didn’t have to wait for the 12% EVAT; right now all the malls, restaurants, and even the “tiangge” clusters all over Metro-Manila are feeling the great let down in Christmas sales.

I texted Sen. Pimentel querying about his data and he answered back that his came from the reports of the tiangge organizers. I spoke to one of the country’s top retail chain stores with several hundred outlets in the country and he said that their holiday sales did not show the expected spurt, and this was going to be woeful season for them. Over at the Manila Doctor’s Hospital I bumped into a friend whose mother is under treatment, he’s a Divisoria wholesale-retailer and he says he’s not had this bad a year since he took over his father business sixteen years ago.

What my Divisoria friend did say was that there were only two places in Divisoria doing well, that’s 165 and Misik (not sure of the spelling since I’ve never been there) where buyers can’t understand seller as the latter don’t speak Tagalog or English that proficiently yet – or speak none of it at all. He saw Gina de Venecia and Imelda Marcos shopping there, but outside of these two stores everybody else is suffering – including the countless tiangge stores and vendors lining up Recto to Abad Santos which the baranggays had collected rent and the police its “tong” in advance from.

This pessimistic trend is not, however, unique for the year. As this column has stressed from Day One of the Edsa Dos-Gloria administration the exploitative and oppressive policies of ruling elite, the corporatocracy, will lead to a collapse of the economy and society. The masa knew it all along that’s why it defended the Estrada administration that it knew was its only hope. The middle class went along with Edsa Dos, not knowing any better, but now they too are hurting very badly as industry decline and financial chicanery of the financial oligarchs take its toll.

An SWS survey revealed last Friday report that the class A,B,C in Philippine society expressed growing disenchantment with their prospects. While overall those expecting a happy Christmas slumped from 82% in 2002, it has progressively deteriorated to 77% in 2003, 64% in 2004 and 62% this year. In 2002 three-out-of-four of the ABC class expected a happy Christmas, now only three-out-of-five still have the optimism to expect a happy Christmas. The ABC class was also hit hard by the CAP and Pacific Plans educational fund scams, and shook their faith in the system.

With our top-retailer friend and some U.P. economist we summarized the causes: the pension-educational fund collapse hitting tens of thousands of middle class families who save for tuition instead of spend; the peso’s momentary rise causing OFW families to postpone spending waiting for the next Peso; consumer pessimism due to overall economic contraction; the failure of the Arroyo-Monsanto hybrid rice program drying the rural market; the corruption and political crises. These are correct but not enough to explain the five trend of declining national economic fortune.

We have long held that the overall policy of liberalization policies courtesy of the Edsa Dos cabal - i.e. economics devoid of national and social protection – led us to the crisis. The corporatocratic elite wrested State power to prevent a government of, for and by the people from serving the General Welfare through development and equitable wealth distribution. Thus, we can not limit the discussion to getting rid of Gloria but also the need for a socio-economic paradigm shift. This is why our title calls attention Faeldon and comrades to study Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela (like other nationalist Latin American leaders today).

These developments are whispering hope to us, which we will detail next.

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