Seven years of dire Christmases

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/17/2007



Christmas Day is just around the corner, but the merriment is on hold. Times are hard and hopes are down. Consumer sales have not kicked in early as in the past years, shaking the holiday spirits. The largest consumer companies have not seen their charts register the uptick in consumer spending until late last week, as one executive of a transnational confirmed to me. The national economy too is looking a at grim prospects for the next year contrary to earlier predictions as the news reports project “ADB expects RP to miss 2008 Asean growth surge”. We would like to see better news as Gloria’s trumpeters keep announcing for next year, but the facts are clear:

“ADB expects the local economy to sputter anew beginning next year and the country’s growth to decelerate, in contrast to faster growth for its counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). The four largest Asean economies, currently in the upswing phase of their business cycles, were forecast to maintain strong growth in 2008, with Indonesia and Thailand accelerating, Malaysia maintaining this year’s pace, and the Philippines slowing... “ This was the important item last Satruday, after two weeks of continues propaganda proclaiming up to 7% growth for next year basing on this year’s “growth” – but which really was inflationary campaign spending of Gloria.

This column has continued to stressed that the Philippine economy’s decline a continuing fall over the past decades, which indicates that the problem is systemic. It is not just a problem of one administration but a continuing one, and everyone must take the cue from that. For decades now the “analysts” in coffee shops and in barbershops rail about corruption but they miss that point that even if corruption exists and maybe in greater volume in such places as Indonesia or Cambodia, those countries are still growing faster than the Philippines. That’s because their corruption money stays mainly in-country, unlike the Philippine where bureaucratic and corporatocractic loot goes out the country.

Elections do not offer any solution. We have had four presidential elections and even more on the senatorial and local levels, the economic decline and increase in corruption just gets worse. The only administration they cannot blame is that of pro-people, pro-Filipoino Estrada which did not even complete half a term since the corruptors- military and police bureaucrats, the legislature and the judiciary, and the oligarchic corporations deposed it. Except for a lull of two years when expectations for the Gloria regimes were not yet shattered by IMPSA, PPA and Garci, the proportion of citizens calling for change by whatever means has grown to 30% of the population - one out of every three.

What this column, among the vast numbers of newspaper analysts, also uniquely stresses on is the role of the corrupt corporatocracy and old aristocratic elite in the corruption and impoverishment of Philippine society – a fact that was long hidden by the “respectability” of the traditional patricians of the Ayalas, Aboitizes, Lopezes etc. With the devastatingly palpable impact of the public utilities privatizations and abuse of rate increases by the Independent Power Producers, the water privateers, the involvement of the Razons and Aboitizes in the ZTE and now the mother of all scams – the Transco swindle – our years of pounding this point has finally come across to millions of Filipinos.

The Transco privatization is a very clear case in point – over the $ 4-B valuation of its physical assets and the trillions of income over twenty-five years, the Carlyle-China State Grid partnership with Gloria and crony Razon will also take over $2-B of fiber optics business for telecom using the Transco grid; they’ll start it without equity, raising the down payment of $ 1-B by IPO and paying the rest over twenty-five years from the revenues and profits of Transco. This is a sweetheart deal on the category of Type-I diabetes, and a blood transfusion from the people to the oligarchs on the level of Count Dracula. They ironed out the deal involving San Miguel and the Lopezes, fixing the bidding.

The seven New Years since 2001 has seen nothing new but the same progressive decline of the standard of living of the Filipino people, as the ADB study we reported last week putting Indonesia and Sri Lanka ahead of Philippines attests. In my regular Sunday morning jog and coffee with a group of professionals, a Filipino consultant of a multilateral financial institution emphasized that even in comparison to Cambodia which has had 9% growth for the past ten years the Philippines is fast lagging behind. A professional manager in a science and industrial parks added – unless drastic action is taken the country will soon be hopelessly stuck in the bottom.

In this light, the consensus was that the action taken by Gen. Lim and Senator Trillanes was at least a valiant attempt and brave effort to do something about the unending crisis. On the whole, the sense if that below the surface the support for the Manila Pen protest is continuing to grow though the frustration with its failure simmers the desire for the next call to action. For New Year cheers fireworks has always been necessary. Maybe it’s a bit late for this New Year, but there’s a Chinese New Year in February!

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