Crocodile with tears

CONSUMERS' DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/19-25/2012

A little over a week ago, an article appeared in one of the dailies entitled, "The importance of country competitiveness."  It argued for the Philippines to ensure making the grade in global ratings surveys, such as those of Transparency International's Corruption Index, as well as with regard to firm level competitiveness and human resources development through education and "inclusive growth" that responds to the needs of the country's population.  Reading particularly the last prescriptions, I could not help but see a crocodile with tears emoting through the lines as Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (JAZA) expounded on how he believes the Philippines must behave in order to be more competitive.  Nowhere in the real estate tycoon's 923 words do the phrase "Asia's highest electricity prices," "rentier oligarchs," or "exorbitant water bills" appear--three main issues that I attribute to the nation's loss of competitiveness, stunted agro-industrial economy, and the exploitation of the people.

 

The reference point of JAZA's corruption indicators, Transparency International (TI), is an institution that was created by the World Bank (WB) and Western financial interests to confine the definition of "corruption" to their advantage.  Western societies today are controlled by finance capitalists intent on monopolizing the wealth and power of the world through debt and global financial pyramiding schemes that have bankrupted nations, as what had happened to the so-called PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain).  The WB-TI combine looks only at government corruption and not private financial corruption, which is the mother of all corruption.  Moreover, the tandem is part of a larger network involving the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Paris Club (an informal group of global bankers) to serve up the world on a platter to financial predators.  We'll never see the TI investigate, expose, nor condemn, say, the Wall Street bankers' corruption that led to the 2008 Global Financial Crash.

 

JAZA's gibberish about why the Philippines lags in global competitiveness completely misses any mention of high electricity costs in the country, often cited by many companies that have left the country for other investment sites where power costs are much lower, such as Vietnam.  Why doesn't JAZA mention this fundamental problem of our country's exorbitant electricity cost?  The reason for his deaf, dumb, and blind reaction is that energy privatization is one of the diktats of Western financial interests.  This is evidenced by the aggressive campaign of multilaterals, such as the IMF, WB, ADB (Asian Development Bank), as well as bilaterals, such as USAID, in imposing privatization and deregulation of the electricity sectors in subordinated countries in the Third World.  JAZA isn't really interested in the root cause of our country's lack of competitiveness; he's just making a show of superficially discussing it, which makes him a total wimp.

 

In November 2011, Nora Halili Lao, a trustee of the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (PhilExport), said, "electricity costs account for 40 to 50 percent of exporters' total operating expenses.  Considering this, it is difficult for exporters from the Philippines to price their products at more competitive levels… even those (companies that) have already invested in the country are now contemplating (on) moving to either China or Vietnam since the high electricity rates in the Philippines have made them lose their competitive advantage in the global market."  In the same year, Federation of Philippine Industries chairman Meneleo Carlos Jr. said, "the prohibitive cost of electricity in the country must be the biggest reason why foreign investments have been shrinking in the Philippines, while it is kicking up in other countries in the region."  Even more significantly, the same report stated that the Philippines is the only country that has privatized its power industry.

 

Public relations (PR) hacks of the old Philippine elite tout the known members of the oligarchy as icons of business excellence; hence, the special attention to their business opinions.  But are they really credible?  The Ayalas have been mere rentiers exploiting privilege and power never earned.  Their business empire was built on 1,616 hectares of Hacienda de San Pedro de Makati "acquired" (as was the practice of that time, riding on horseback from dawn to dusk) and 10,000 hectares of the "Roxas family playground" in Batangas--absolutely no sweat-and-tears entrepreneurship there.  In their 21st Century incarnation, they still haven't gone into manufacturing or high tech industries, as the export of semi-conductors, also a comprador business, merely takes advantage of low wages in the import and assembly of parts, not unlike their other rentier businesses, namely, the privatized water utilities, which make use of consumer cash flow to fund business development.  In essence, JAZA isn't worried about country competitiveness at all because high electricity prices don't matter to him; all he needs to do is raise rent and water rates.

 

JAZA writes: "National competitiveness simply cannot be achieved if majority of the population is struggling to meet their most basic needs."  My heart almost bled reading this because just last week, we received complaints from the water consuming  public about Ayala-owned Manila Water's collection policy on household consumers, disallowing the "Pay one, leave one" payment system, i.e. one month overdue plus one month due, slashing the homeowners' credit line for the most essential of household utilities.  This is aside from the fact that water utility charges have ballooned over 10 times from the time water service was privatized to the Ayalas and other oligarchs.  Notice the disparity between JAZA's actual practice and his lament over "the population struggling to meet (its) basic needs."

 

So what are we to make of these contradictions?  The dictionary states that "the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess" is nothing but plain "hypocrisy," which, unfortunately, is the oil of commerce in this society of ours.

 

If any, what the era of privatization in the Philippines, along with the hardship it spawned, has exposed is the hypocrisy of the entire system.  That system, based on oligarchy-led economics, was ushered in by no less than the Edsa I counter-revolution against a state-led national development program, which put utilities and other strategic assets (and means of production) in the hands of the public.  The Nation-State must therefore be restored to pre-eminence so that our people's needs will be addressed and the oligarchs' monopolization of our national wealth be put to an end.

 

(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN's HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on "Mines: Bombs or boon?;" visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)