The parasitic elite's victims

CONSUMERS DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
7/18-24/2011

 

Even though the thought of it isn’t new, reports such as the one filed last July 13 by Emmie Abadilla of the Manila Bulletin entitled, “Local telecom interconnection rates highest in the Asia-Pacific region,” only serve to remind us all of the extent of the abuse that we as consumers suffer on a regular basis.  That story provided us with data on how Philippine cellphone rates are at the top in the region, “averaging at $0.10, versus its neighbors who charge from $0.03 to $0.05.”  Translated, it means we’re paying around P4.30 for every interconnection from competing telecoms providers compared to, say, our neighboring Malaysia or Thailand, which only charge P1.34 to P2.20 for the same service.  And that means ours is double or even triple their cost!
 

Unfortunately, this pattern is the same in many other privatized utility services in the Philippines--be it in electricity, water, port handling, or even toll ways.  Of course, many Filipinos are by now aware that the price or rate-gouging in public utilities is not only limited to electricity ever since the era of privatization began.
 

Many of the owners of such privatized utilities are, in fact, interconnected or interlocked at the level of the Board of Directors and stockholders.  Meralco is the prime example of this: Practically all the major oligarchs-slash-corporations today are feasting on the company’s highest power rates in Asia.  These are so high that even congressional data showing us having the second highest industrial/commercial rates next to Singapore simply fall short of the truth as the greater bulk of Meralco’s revenues comes from residential consumers, who pay for rates that are up to 20 times higher than that of the industrial/commercial sector--and yes, higher still than Singapore’s.
 

It is indeed a feeding frenzy for this pod of killer whales gorging on everything the public vitally needs for a decent, modern, and productive life.  Increasing the cost of these basic utilities has undoubtedly begun to shrink the Filipino middle class and consign much of 65 percent of our urban poor to a life reminiscent of the “Stone Age.”
 

Government institutions, I would like to believe, do try to restrain the greed of these oligarchs and mega-corporations, as the evidence shows with regard to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC)’s attempt to bring down Philippine interconnection rates from P4.20 to P1 and text messaging charges from the current P0.35 to a more reasonable P0.15. This has forced some telecom companies to make their own proposals for a graduated decrease in their rates. Still, the NTC should force an immediate cut as these firms have long been feasting on the highest telecom rates in the Asia-Pacific for the past two decades.
 

Globe, for one, proposed a one-year grace period before reducing its text interconnection charges.  But doesn’t that just translate to more needless billions, which texting consumers would have to pay for?
 

With the many rate increases the BSA III government is waiting to spring on the public--from MRT/LRT fares, to the Performance Based Regulation (PBR) rates in electricity, plus the Universal Charge that PSALM is itching to add to the mix--the burden on consumers will become even more unbearable.
 

When one observes how the privatization of utilities evolved in the Philippines, the pattern of consolidation of elite control of such assets--through political and financial chicanery; deception by trickery or sophistry; or both--was all brought down upon the consuming public after Edsa I, or the so-called Yellow “democratization” of the country.
 

Instead, what we had was the unending vilification of the State, where government institutions, as well as nationally-owned assets, were vigorously demonized and associated with the alleged excesses of former President Marcos and his cronies, despite the fact that the privatization frenzy that came after his fall had actually expanded the base of Edsa I cronies, chief of which are the old oligarchy--the Ayalas and Lopezes--as well as new globalist partners such as the Salim and Suharto groups of Indonesia and the transnational energy firm, Mirant.
 

All told, these oligarchs only gained new power over the State by capturing it and, with bribery of the corrupt political class, consisting of such well-entrenched families as the Cojuangcos, Lopezes, Macapagals, Roxases et al., through “elected” puppets such as FVR, Gloria, and now BSA III, drew up anti-people programs and policies such as the IPPs, EPIRA, and now BSA III’s Public-Private Partnerships.
 

The ongoing political, including judicial and financial, trickery and sophistry permeate the whole of our system today not just in privatized public utilities. In one of the largest economic sectors of our society, the ruling elite has just pulled off one of the greatest swindles in our history--the transfer of P70 billion of one portion of the Coconut Levy shares in San Miguel Corp. to Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.  Imagine: Twenty-five million coconut industry dependents were sacrificed to satisfy just one man!
 

The whole system, from the legal practitioners, such as ACCRALaw, to the politicians it sprang like Enrile, Angara, Drilon, the late Raul Roco et al., to the entire judicial system, as well as the mainstream media, all collaborated to consummate this giant scam.
 

Another example is the Hacienda Luisita case, where the same ruling elite, with its politicians and lawyers, and the judicial system subverted the original stipulations of the government loans to the other Cojuangco clan for obtaining the said property, which involved the eventual transfer of the actual land to the farmers--not so-called “shares” of stocks.
 

This leads me to a quote I have repeatedly paraphrased for readers to instill this lesson of history: Arnold J. Toynbee in A Study of History wrote that “the cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal… proletariats” or the people alienated from the fruits of the economy.
 

The earlier the Filipino people and consumers, particularly the middle class, learn that they can no longer trust the ruling elite, the earlier they will be ready for meaningful change.  All our present rulers are simply parasites; we need a new “savior” to gather our growing popular rage into an organized movement.
 

We, the non-elite and non-oligarchs, are all victims of the parasitic elite.  It is time that we launch the final campaigns to pull down these parasites from their perches of power so that they will be finally crushed beneath our feet.
 

(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “Franchising: Hope for Economic Recovery”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)