CONSUMERS DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/19-25/2011
I owe it to our weekly OpinYon readers to give a year-end assessment of the state of the national economy. For Juan de la Cruz, keeping track of the country’s financial, material and social conditions alone is a task made doubly difficult by the leadership in Malacañang that certain quarters say deliberately creates noisy political sideshows and circuses to divert attention from the true economic picture. This time, though, summing up and accurately describing the state of our economy is made a bit easier with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) assessment of our GDP (gross domestic product), which it says “is well below the official 5 to 6% target and the 4.5 to 5.5% forecast,” prompting it to cut its full-year outlook for 2011 to just “3.7% from (the previous) 4.7%.” The BS Aquino III administration actually had, in economist Ben Diokno’s words, only “aspirational” growth rates of 7 to 8%; whereas the reality for the people now is an “asphyxiational” growth rate that is choking our economy.
The IMF’s projection for Philippine GDP next year is 4.2%. Truth to tell, for an economy to just stand in place, at least 6% growth should be achieved; below that, it would be simply falling behind expectations--for example, in jobs generation, which is vital to a growing labor supply setting like the Philippines. The Aquino III administration cannot contend that the global financial and economic crisis since 2008 has hampered its efforts because all other countries in Asia are faced with the same conditions but with them doing much better. The IMF projects that Vietnam’s 2012 GDP will be 6.5%, with its 2011 growth rate estimated at 5.8%--almost double that of the Philippines. The consensus of all economic analysts about our country’s dismal performance has been the under-spending of the Aquino III government, courtesy of its Budget Secretary Butch Abad and its economic team, led by NEDA (National Economic Development Authority) chief Cayetano Paderanga. For lesser fiascos, other officials have been fired; but not in this administration.
As this column was intended to analyze, reflect and provide enlightenment and guidance to OpinYon readers on consumer welfare and protection issues, this focus necessarily brought us to the gamut of social, financial, as well as micro- and macro-economic issues. We have given the most space and effort to electricity, putting it on the people’s consciousness as the top economic issue. Today, almost everyone knows that the Philippines has “the highest power cost in Asia” and a national outcry has been raised to demand action from the highest authority of the land. But, in spite of such calls, coming even from normally taciturn conservative business and labor groups, Malacañang has chosen to stay meek and mute. Worse, Congress and the Senate are not only equally mute; but the Energy Committee chairs, Sen. Serge Osmeña and Rep. Dina Abad, are actively suppressing initiatives from the few legislators who have dared to raise questions. Oligarchs win, people suffer.
I cannot overemphasize the deleterious and devastating impact of the oligarchs’ control of our political institutions that determine the rest of the nation’s economic-social governance, which stack the odds against the people. As in electricity, our petroleum sector which was privatized and deregulated since FVR’s term--a common program of all the Yellow (Edsa I and II) administrations from Cory to Gloria and now, Aquino III--charges some of the highest rates in the world. A recent report on Philippine gasoline prices showed our unleaded gasoline to be 20% higher than the highest unleaded gasoline prices in the United States.
The major oil companies here are alliances of the local oligarchs with the global petroleum giants--from Shell, which has the Ayalas, to Petron, which has the Ashmore group with San Miguel Corp. lurking behind--all traditional oligarch family names intertwined with the political dynasties of the land.
But that’s not all: As we turn to every strategic sector of the economy, we see the oligarchs and their abuses. Our telecommunications charges, for instance, are high due to the highest interconnection fees in the world. Our MRT and LRT have been exploited by a few local families that conspired with the regime of FVR to set sky high profits for the “investors” while financing these with government “sovereign guarantees;” which led to a forced government buyback and instant profits in connivance with Goldman Sachs and other foreign finance mafia firms suing the Philippine government for payment (with the captive Arroyo government only too willing to cooperate by compelling the DBP and Land Bank to cough out $800 million to $1 billion).
By the way, scandals are now erupting around this involving Bobby Ongpin while BS Aquino III and MVP this time around are working out a sweetheart deal to re-privatize the MRT after taxpayers shell our P6 billion to refurbish it, with MVP subsequently allowed to raise fares by up to 70% by 2012.
Our regular column here has also dealt with other critical issues involving the scams of global oligarchy-captured institutions such as the WHO. We were among the very, very few Filipinos who understood the scam behind the H1N1 scare to compel our governments to buy billions of useless vaccines, which now have all gone to waste. We also wrote of the HPV vaccine hoax, which is still being pushed by pharmaceutical firms, beauty consultants (like Belo) and some government health officials, being completely unnecessary aside from being very harmful, as many cases of serious side effects in the US have shown.
Invariably, at the root of all these problems that bedevil consumers (who are also taxpayers and citizens) is the financial oligarchy that pulls the strings and moves its puppets (in the corridors of government and other multilateral or national public institutions, as well as mainstream media) to pull the wool over the public’s eyes while picking their pockets.
Our society and country must therefore head toward the elimination of the power of the oligarchy over our national polity, government and financial structures, in order to restore genuine people’s power (not of the Yellow kind that hides the oligarchs behind its glare). We still hope that our electoral system can bring the changes we need, by installing the correct political leaders who will uphold public interest over oligarchic greed.
Since we have two elections ahead where our actions can count, we need to treble our efforts to educate, elucidate and enlighten the nation and the people. That is what we in OpinYon have pledged to accomplish, along with my own little tri-media sphere that always blares the message: “Down with the Oligarchs! Up with the People!”
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