DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/12/2011
A very recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) study had the Philippines dropping to its lowest level in gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 2005 to 2008 among countries in the Asia-Pacific. Currently ranked No. 22, the Philippines used to be 2nd only to Japan in the 1950s and 15th during the early Marcos years (1965-1968). Today, it has been left behind by Vietnam at 7th place, Indonesia at 10th, Thailand at 13th, and Malaysia at 16th, in a group where China, India, Mongolia, Uruguay and (yes) Argentina (of the debt default fame) are the notable leaders.
This IMF report comes on the heels of an anti-poverty summit on 25 years of increasing poverty in RP, which we have traced to the Yellows and their Edsa I and II counter-revolutions. For a quarter of a century, they have waged “hate campaigns,” first against Marcos, then Erap, and now against one of their own, Gloria Arroyo, all to distract the nation from the continuing GDP crashes they have ushered in since 1986.
The last quarter’s growth rate of 3.2 percent is certainly the nadir to which BSA III’s administration has brought this country. Yet, despite its huge toll, this dire economic reversal is not on the agenda of any mainstream debates — whether in the academe, media, the punditry at large, or the religious sector.
Worse, all the Yellows do is rant about BS Aquino’s purported war against Gloria (despite coddling her for a-year-and-a-half) or his new spat with the Supreme Court (SC) and its chief Justice. Here, the Yellows’ “best minds” are brought in to elevate the play-acting — such as that laughable Jesuit Bernas, who compared Noynoy the wimp to the revolutionary giant, Fidel Castro.
Notwithstanding many people’s insistence on more apt parallelisms between PeNoy and Joshua, Forrest Gump, or Bimby; or between Bernas and Damaso, Rasputin, Richelieu or Cardinal Brady of Ireland (the pedophile-priest coddler), let us elevate this discussion from that small-minded analogy to one honest-to-goodness comparison between Fidel Castro’s Cuba and the Yellows’ Philippines: Cuba in 2011 ranked 51st in the United Nation’s Human Development Index while our country only managed to land 112th.
In truth, that Jesuit would no longer be listened to had it not been for the oligarchy-controlled media’s non-stop portrayal of him as a “legal luminary” and “constitutionalist,” when all he has done is to show himself up as a fraud through several of his twisted legal opinions (such as in 2001, which considered a coup d’etat legal for as long as the plotter emerges the victor).
Meanwhile, the Yellow media’s AC/DC (attack-commentary; defend-commentary) on the Arroyo and Corona issues continue to hide the ongoing plunder.
For one, the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (Psalm), with the prodding of the energy pirates as well as the approval of Finance Secretary and corporate gofer Cesar Purisima, is indebting Filipino taxpayers once more by another P75 billion (for 2011) and P85 billion (for 2012) for its working capital and operational funding — despite the fact that it has already privatized over 80 percent of the National Power Corp. (Napocor)’s power generating assets, aside from $4 billion worth of the nation’s transmission grid.
Despite the sale of all those assets, Psalm is still saddled with practically its original debt of $18 billion, thereby needing more taxpayers’ billions to keep operating.
Why then was there a need to privatize anything at all when not a shred of the debt or operating cost was going to be covered (where even the $4 billion for our transmission assets hasn’t been collected but with the new owners already raking it in with $200 million in annual profits).
Without an iota of doubt, the massive electricity plundering today was set into high gear in Edsa II, where “civil society,” typified by the likes of Conrado de Quiros, conspired with the now proven corrupt politicos and treasonous military (with the oligarchs’ help) to oust a popularly-elected president who rejected all onerous deals; opposed “sovereign guarantees;” brought down Metro Rail Transit fares (which Yellows like Mar Roxas have been trying to raise); and never allowed a single power and water rate increase in his two-and-a-half year term.
Instead, De Quiros and his ilk attempt to write Procrustean (after Poseidon’s son Procrustes, who cut off victims’ legs to force fit into a small iron bed) to redeem themselves and to spite their hated figure, President Joseph Estrada, even when they are shown up as clowns with their distorted versions of history.
As Erap claimed that Gloria’s arrest is his vindication, the anti-Erap De Quiros could only retort that “if Arroyo’s arrest is any vindication at all, it is a vindication not of Erap but of the groups that demanded that Erap be replaced.”
Now how can this still be claimed with all the evidence of a quantum leap in Filipinos’ economic misery, not to mention political turmoil, post-Edsa II? Perhaps, such a pathological need to lie only reflects a deep-seated fear of the evidence that would damn them.
On the other hand, the proclivity for Procrustean narratives applies to the pro-Gloria Yellows, too. One such fellow, Teddy Locsin Jr., praises the seven-percent GDP under Gloria in 2010 when this was mainly due to election spending. He then tries to deflect attention by digging up past allegations against Estrada, even when he knows that, among other things, the delivery of jueteng money wasn’t proved in court, nor was the stock manipulation charge that was denied by the pension funds’ chiefs.
In truth, Locsin even remarked that the evidence tended to exonerate Estrada — it’s just that this, according to him, was no longer the nation’s problem.
They may talk of the “Rule of Law” today. But what did they say when Estrada’s impeachment trial was scuttled and the myth of his “constructive resignation” was upheld by their court? Well, as it is often said of the Yellows: Ibang klase talaga!
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