The plunder ‘elite’

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 10/14/2013 / Daily Tribune

For three decades now we have heard and read how establishment institutions, from school books to Western media, such as Time/CNN, to local mainstream and the addled social media, have portrayed how "plundering" Ferdinand Marcos was. But the desire of BS Aquino, expressed through Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, to expand presidential discretion over, for instance, the disposition of government's share of revenues from the Malampaya natural gas facility reveals just who has the real plundering mindset. And it's none other than the jaundiced, Yellow Edsa I power elite led by the likes of the Aquino family and cronies such as Belmonte.

Marcos' earmarking of the Malampaya Fund to energy-related projects at the project's inception defined a clear sense of priority, propriety and foresight. It indicated the clear understanding of the Philippines' need for continued dedication to indigenous energy source development and protecting the revenues from the Malampaya project from diversion to anything other than that goal. Decades after Marcos set up the energy development programs to create a self-sufficient energy base for the country, we have been witness to a progressive dismantling of that energy self-sufficiency program and, now, the imminent threat of dissipating one of the last sources of funds dedicated to it.

Is the idea of dissipating the Malampaya Fund really BS Aquino's or is it simply Belmonte manipulating his little "tyke" from the Boston years of Ninoy Aquino's exile? The current House Speaker is seen as the epitome of the greed that marks the Yellow decades of governance in this country. In fact, if the public were to look for the root of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) schemes, it should call for the investigation of Belmonte and his coterie known as "the Quezon City mafia" that includes Executive Secretary Jojo Ochoa and a one-time treasury chief who is a master in packaging financial instruments to plunder government coffers. Not surprisingly, Belmonte, in the name of BS Aquino, has now set his sights on frittering away the Malampaya Fund to "alleviate poverty and job creation."

Just think about it: BS Aquino and his top House henchman have passed a national budget of over P2 trillion every year. They have allocated over P100 billion for the anti-poverty conditional cash transfer (CCT) program the past years and over P48 billion for 2014. Yet one cannot see where the poverty and unemployment alleviation goes. It's so bad that even BS Aquino and Yellow crony Walden Bello had to admit that recently in the news article, "Global poverty down, Philippine poverty remains high," given the National Statistics Coordination Board data that 27.9 percent live below the poverty line. Worse, National Economic Development Authority chief Arsenio Balisacan, in "Unemployment rate inches up to 7.3 percent in July 2013," even had to admit that the "September 2013 underemployment rate rose to 22.7 percent — the highest since July 2006."

So why is Belmonte coming up with this scheme to divert the roughly P150-billion Malampaya Fund? With three years left of the BS Aquino administration, this gang is showing its intent on cleaning out every fund it can lay its hands on, no matter the scandal that may ensue. This proposal for opening the use of the Malampaya Fund to other than energy-related purposes will ensure its travel down the long drains of official greed and corruption.

While we are wary of any "ouster" moves against a government or president without a prepared alternative, I'm afraid we have to join the call as nothing may be left of the government treasury after BS Aquino and his Yellow cronies are through with it.

Although weakened by the sinking US dollar, the Yellow ruling class, being a collaboration of the US neocolonial overlords and their traditional financial-economic-political oligarchy, prevails because of divisiveness built into Philippine society — from obscurantist religious sects, a military indoctrinated against genuine nationalism, to the addled middle class and "social media," etc.

Impoverished Filipinos now see through the Yellow Edsa I "democracy" and "growth" frauds. Hope lies in the rise of reformist young officers, the militant nationalists, principled "rejectionists" of the Left, and the latent Edsa III forces (if revived in the face of oppression), among other reform movements.

But for genuine social reformers to win, weaving a thread of unity across the progressive nationalist elements is a precondition. Only a meeting of minds of these anti-Yellow forces will suffice.

The time to stop and end the plundering elite around BS Aquino and the Yellows is now. The opportunity to coalesce and win for genuine change is approaching with the anti-presidential pork crusade rising and the US continuing its downward spiral into social and political chaos that not even the resolution of its "shutdown" and its "debt ceiling" crises will stop.

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