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)
Monday, July 18, 2011
Oust all... make heads roll
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
7/18/2011
Col. Generoso Mariano, deputy commander of the Naval Reserve Command, declared that the Aquino government “has no capability to save us from hunger and death.” In that Facebook video dated July 3 he argued, “We soldiers also feel the impact of (the) unrelenting rise in prices of commodities, medicines and food… If this government has no intention or is not doing anything to save the life of the majority, it is the right of every Filipino, including soldiers, to replace the government. I repeat, replace the government.” He then exhorted everyone to “once and for all build a nation based on truth for without it there can be no justice, and without justice… no peace and without peace… no development.” The video, by the way, was posted by a group called “Oust Noynoy Movement!”
While Col. Mariano’s plaints are obvious, his timing leaves some questions: Why only now? Why not during Gloria Arroyo’s time which was as bad? And why replace only the government when the whole system is at fault?
Vice Adm. Alexander Pama said Col. Mariano is currently under investigation and confined to headquarters. Pama must have some inkling of Mariano’s reasons as I am told he, too, was supposed to have joined Gen. Danilo Lim’s military protest in 2006.
Most of you may know that I have supported such military actions in the past--from the Bagong Katipunero’s (or the Magdalo’s) to Gen. Danny Lim’s--because I know of RP’s systemic socio-economic injustice brought about by oligarchic exploitation as well as neocolonial enslavement, which have exacerbated poverty and decay with no resolution at hand.
These ills that demand real solutions are not being addressed at all with the seriousness required, even a year after the present administration has stepped in. Only palliatives and PR stunts in the form of Conditional Cash Transfers or Public-Private Partnerships are the order of the day while Filipinos continue to be on “Debt Row,” with their basic necessities progressively priced beyond reach--and this, as government is mired in squabbles and ineptitude, apparently oblivious to the erosion of its moral claims by its own KKKs.
Our military friends had already expected Col. Mariano’s move two weeks before it came out. I was also informed that Mariano, a reserve officer (not a PMAer), had joined the 1989 RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) coup attempt but has since been uninvolved. When his Marine colleagues such as Gen. Miranda and Cols. De Leon and Segumalian protested in 2006, for instance, he was not among those who were hauled off to detention.
Some speculate that, with his retirement coming up a week after his video came out, among Mariano’s other motives was possibly a missed chance to make the rank of general. True or not, such timing certainly can’t compare with the incontrovertible sacrifices of the young Bagong Katipunero officers who staked their careers or Gen. Danny Lim who was in line for promotion when he took action.
Having considered all the information, I can say that Col. Mariano’s act still helps the cause of change by calling attention to the crisis in Philippine society and its political-economic morass. One major shortcoming of Mariano’s declaration, though, is his limiting the blame to the present government--a half-truth that has opened him to be rightly or wrongly interpreted as part of the ploy of the (still) “worst enemy of the Filipino people today,” who has all the reason to create distractions and destabilizations to deflect from the growing crisis she faces. And this is what other factions of the military are now saying about him.
From my perspective--coming from one who’s rabidly against both the present government and Gloria Arroyo’s forces--Col. Mariano could have been more credible if he had made his analysis comprehensive enough to cover the ills of the entire system, calling for the “ouster of all.”
The present ruling system and the people behind it--or the ruling class, which includes the financial, economic, military, political, and “civil society” elite--thrive on the betrayal of the sovereignty of the people. They subvert the nation’s sovereignty and economic aspirations by collaborating with foreign interests to perpetuate debt-dependence; the institutionalization of alternating corrupt regimes through coups disguised as “People Power” and rigged elections (Hocus-PCOS); the systematic dismantling of the State through liberalization and privatization; and the consequent elimination of “public welfare,” “public service,” and “national interest,” in favor of “profit” and “corporate welfare.” Such outcomes are what Mariano described in common-tao terms as the “hunger and death,” which ordinary soldiers also feel.
But shouldn’t he stop to think: Who are behind the present government he despises? Weren’t the Ayalas, Lopezes, Cojuangcos, the Makati Business Club, the newer oligarchs, “civil society” and its NGOs, the clergy, as well as the US and Britain, along with their respective chambers of commerce, behind Arroyo for as long as they were able to exact their pound of flesh from us? And aren’t they now behind the present dispensation and massively profiting from us as well?
The Col. Marianos, the Bagong Katipuneros and Para sa Bayan soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and all the impoverished people of this nation should see through the ruling elite’s games, particularly the Noynoy vs. Gloria moro-moro. In the spirit of Bonifacio’s Revolution, let’s all unite and oust them all--and make their heads roll!
(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.
Herman Tiu Laurel
7/18/2011
Col. Generoso Mariano, deputy commander of the Naval Reserve Command, declared that the Aquino government “has no capability to save us from hunger and death.” In that Facebook video dated July 3 he argued, “We soldiers also feel the impact of (the) unrelenting rise in prices of commodities, medicines and food… If this government has no intention or is not doing anything to save the life of the majority, it is the right of every Filipino, including soldiers, to replace the government. I repeat, replace the government.” He then exhorted everyone to “once and for all build a nation based on truth for without it there can be no justice, and without justice… no peace and without peace… no development.” The video, by the way, was posted by a group called “Oust Noynoy Movement!”
While Col. Mariano’s plaints are obvious, his timing leaves some questions: Why only now? Why not during Gloria Arroyo’s time which was as bad? And why replace only the government when the whole system is at fault?
Vice Adm. Alexander Pama said Col. Mariano is currently under investigation and confined to headquarters. Pama must have some inkling of Mariano’s reasons as I am told he, too, was supposed to have joined Gen. Danilo Lim’s military protest in 2006.
Most of you may know that I have supported such military actions in the past--from the Bagong Katipunero’s (or the Magdalo’s) to Gen. Danny Lim’s--because I know of RP’s systemic socio-economic injustice brought about by oligarchic exploitation as well as neocolonial enslavement, which have exacerbated poverty and decay with no resolution at hand.
These ills that demand real solutions are not being addressed at all with the seriousness required, even a year after the present administration has stepped in. Only palliatives and PR stunts in the form of Conditional Cash Transfers or Public-Private Partnerships are the order of the day while Filipinos continue to be on “Debt Row,” with their basic necessities progressively priced beyond reach--and this, as government is mired in squabbles and ineptitude, apparently oblivious to the erosion of its moral claims by its own KKKs.
Our military friends had already expected Col. Mariano’s move two weeks before it came out. I was also informed that Mariano, a reserve officer (not a PMAer), had joined the 1989 RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) coup attempt but has since been uninvolved. When his Marine colleagues such as Gen. Miranda and Cols. De Leon and Segumalian protested in 2006, for instance, he was not among those who were hauled off to detention.
Some speculate that, with his retirement coming up a week after his video came out, among Mariano’s other motives was possibly a missed chance to make the rank of general. True or not, such timing certainly can’t compare with the incontrovertible sacrifices of the young Bagong Katipunero officers who staked their careers or Gen. Danny Lim who was in line for promotion when he took action.
Having considered all the information, I can say that Col. Mariano’s act still helps the cause of change by calling attention to the crisis in Philippine society and its political-economic morass. One major shortcoming of Mariano’s declaration, though, is his limiting the blame to the present government--a half-truth that has opened him to be rightly or wrongly interpreted as part of the ploy of the (still) “worst enemy of the Filipino people today,” who has all the reason to create distractions and destabilizations to deflect from the growing crisis she faces. And this is what other factions of the military are now saying about him.
From my perspective--coming from one who’s rabidly against both the present government and Gloria Arroyo’s forces--Col. Mariano could have been more credible if he had made his analysis comprehensive enough to cover the ills of the entire system, calling for the “ouster of all.”
The present ruling system and the people behind it--or the ruling class, which includes the financial, economic, military, political, and “civil society” elite--thrive on the betrayal of the sovereignty of the people. They subvert the nation’s sovereignty and economic aspirations by collaborating with foreign interests to perpetuate debt-dependence; the institutionalization of alternating corrupt regimes through coups disguised as “People Power” and rigged elections (Hocus-PCOS); the systematic dismantling of the State through liberalization and privatization; and the consequent elimination of “public welfare,” “public service,” and “national interest,” in favor of “profit” and “corporate welfare.” Such outcomes are what Mariano described in common-tao terms as the “hunger and death,” which ordinary soldiers also feel.
But shouldn’t he stop to think: Who are behind the present government he despises? Weren’t the Ayalas, Lopezes, Cojuangcos, the Makati Business Club, the newer oligarchs, “civil society” and its NGOs, the clergy, as well as the US and Britain, along with their respective chambers of commerce, behind Arroyo for as long as they were able to exact their pound of flesh from us? And aren’t they now behind the present dispensation and massively profiting from us as well?
The Col. Marianos, the Bagong Katipuneros and Para sa Bayan soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and all the impoverished people of this nation should see through the ruling elite’s games, particularly the Noynoy vs. Gloria moro-moro. In the spirit of Bonifacio’s Revolution, let’s all unite and oust them all--and make their heads roll!
(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.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
A highly politicized Supreme Court
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
7/16-17/2011
The people have often referred the Supreme Court as the court of last resort. Their reference to it is not really for what it means, but more importantly that they expect it to resolve their disputes with finality.
But in the recent ruling of the country’s most controversial land case, the Supreme Court instead created issues, thereby reopening old wounds which the parties believe could have been by their submission to its the jurisdiction. Such was the case of Hacienda Luisita. Instead of resolving the issues, it ordered the re-holding of a referendum. For that the highly politicized Supreme
Court practically acted like Pontius Pilate. By the washing of its hands, it threw back the problem to the litigants.
As pointed out by many, had it simplified the problem by taking cognizance of the original agreement to distribute the lands to the tenants after 20 years —as the hacienda overlords promised with the GSIS when they obtained the loan to purchase their property from Tabacalera, a promise which has now been translated to a decision by then Tarlac Judge Bernardo Pardo—the problem could have been a closed case by now.
Rather, the Supreme Court’s order for the owners of the 2 healed 6,443 hectares Hacienda Luisita to conduct another referendum to an estimated 6,296 farm workers on whether they favor land distribution or stick to their old decision in favor of a stock distribution option (SDO), became another of its infamous decisions.
It was political rather than a judicial decision to scrap the result of the referendum in 1990 where the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita already voted in favor of SDO instead of a piece of land they could till as their own.
It was irregular because there was no allegation of fraud for the court to validly set aside the result of the earlier referendum. All that was raised by those who were against the giving of those worthless SDOs is it did not improve their economic condition. Effectively, the decision ignored the real issues that the giving of stocks as substitute to land reform was unconstitutional and illegal.
It will not even suffice for the Supreme Court to reopen the case on the ground that those who voted in favor of SDO changed their mind. Unless and until the earlier referendum was characterized by massive fraud resulting in their being shortchanged, the decision by the alleged majority could no longer be disturbed. As the saying goes, they have to swallow the bitter pill of their own decision.
But having immersed itself deeply in politics, the Supreme Court derailed the case altogether. Instead of rectifying the issues, it validated an option not found in the constitution.
The people expected the Supreme Court, as the final interpreter of the Constitution and of the laws, to declare Republic Act No. 66573 as unconstitutional. To paradoxically restate what that “tantrumatic” Senator Miriam Santiago said to PCSO chairwomen Margie Juico, all that was needed was for one to know how to read, and literally he could rightly interpret the Constitution beginning with the elementary procedure of looking for that word “stocks” in the provision.
Up to now people wonder how the Supreme Court voted to the idea of reholding another referendum when there is nothing in Section 4, Article XIII of the 1987 Constitution which says about stock distribution. Instead of striking out R.A. No. 6657 as unconstitutional, it rode on the crest of a questionable law enacted by highly partisan pro-Aquino followers who stupidly inserted stocks as an option to land reform.
The justices too, had their amnesia that the whole concept of agrarian reform is focused on how to redistribute the agricultural lands to the tillers of the soil, which has become a mandate after it was incorporated into the Constitution. Even if the legality of the SDO was not directly raised, it was its emblematic judicial duty, or as lawyers would put it muto proprio, to annul the agreement, it being rooted on an unconstitutional law.
Critics also argue that the prime portions of the hacienda had already been converted to an industrial park; that a mall had already been constructed; and that an exclusive hideaway subdivision complete with an 18 hole golf course and a country club had been built. This has effectively reduced the original land area to 4,915 hectares with the Supreme Court arbitrarily reducing it further to 44,334.55 hectares without elaborating whether this is the area what would be subjected for referendum. In other words, the farmers were all left out in the sharing of the proceeds of those portions that were sold.
The question is, if ordinary land owners are prohibited from selling in whole or in part the property which is the subject of land reform, then how come the owners of Hacienda Luisita were allowed to dispose those prime portions of the land leaving those considered of less value to be included in the referendum?
Assuming they could no longer be recovered, still the Supreme Court failed to order the accounting of the proceeds in the sale of those prime portions of the hacienda to give the aggrieved farmers the cash equivalent of what they lost. It cannot be denied that aside from having acted in bad faith, the owners of the hacienda managed to rake, and continue to rake in, much profit from the sale and lease of their properties now classified as out of reach for land distribution or for partnership with the farmers through that much-hooted SDO.
Indeed the decision has given the public clarity on how the magistrates acted miserably; that they could not be wrong in accusing them of playing footsy with politics. the judgment was not on how to realign the issues with what the law provides, but on something that would ensure their future accommodation with the President. ingratiate themselves as a bounty awaits them after retirement.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
7/16-17/2011
The people have often referred the Supreme Court as the court of last resort. Their reference to it is not really for what it means, but more importantly that they expect it to resolve their disputes with finality.
But in the recent ruling of the country’s most controversial land case, the Supreme Court instead created issues, thereby reopening old wounds which the parties believe could have been by their submission to its the jurisdiction. Such was the case of Hacienda Luisita. Instead of resolving the issues, it ordered the re-holding of a referendum. For that the highly politicized Supreme
Court practically acted like Pontius Pilate. By the washing of its hands, it threw back the problem to the litigants.
As pointed out by many, had it simplified the problem by taking cognizance of the original agreement to distribute the lands to the tenants after 20 years —as the hacienda overlords promised with the GSIS when they obtained the loan to purchase their property from Tabacalera, a promise which has now been translated to a decision by then Tarlac Judge Bernardo Pardo—the problem could have been a closed case by now.
Rather, the Supreme Court’s order for the owners of the 2 healed 6,443 hectares Hacienda Luisita to conduct another referendum to an estimated 6,296 farm workers on whether they favor land distribution or stick to their old decision in favor of a stock distribution option (SDO), became another of its infamous decisions.
It was political rather than a judicial decision to scrap the result of the referendum in 1990 where the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita already voted in favor of SDO instead of a piece of land they could till as their own.
It was irregular because there was no allegation of fraud for the court to validly set aside the result of the earlier referendum. All that was raised by those who were against the giving of those worthless SDOs is it did not improve their economic condition. Effectively, the decision ignored the real issues that the giving of stocks as substitute to land reform was unconstitutional and illegal.
It will not even suffice for the Supreme Court to reopen the case on the ground that those who voted in favor of SDO changed their mind. Unless and until the earlier referendum was characterized by massive fraud resulting in their being shortchanged, the decision by the alleged majority could no longer be disturbed. As the saying goes, they have to swallow the bitter pill of their own decision.
But having immersed itself deeply in politics, the Supreme Court derailed the case altogether. Instead of rectifying the issues, it validated an option not found in the constitution.
The people expected the Supreme Court, as the final interpreter of the Constitution and of the laws, to declare Republic Act No. 66573 as unconstitutional. To paradoxically restate what that “tantrumatic” Senator Miriam Santiago said to PCSO chairwomen Margie Juico, all that was needed was for one to know how to read, and literally he could rightly interpret the Constitution beginning with the elementary procedure of looking for that word “stocks” in the provision.
Up to now people wonder how the Supreme Court voted to the idea of reholding another referendum when there is nothing in Section 4, Article XIII of the 1987 Constitution which says about stock distribution. Instead of striking out R.A. No. 6657 as unconstitutional, it rode on the crest of a questionable law enacted by highly partisan pro-Aquino followers who stupidly inserted stocks as an option to land reform.
The justices too, had their amnesia that the whole concept of agrarian reform is focused on how to redistribute the agricultural lands to the tillers of the soil, which has become a mandate after it was incorporated into the Constitution. Even if the legality of the SDO was not directly raised, it was its emblematic judicial duty, or as lawyers would put it muto proprio, to annul the agreement, it being rooted on an unconstitutional law.
Critics also argue that the prime portions of the hacienda had already been converted to an industrial park; that a mall had already been constructed; and that an exclusive hideaway subdivision complete with an 18 hole golf course and a country club had been built. This has effectively reduced the original land area to 4,915 hectares with the Supreme Court arbitrarily reducing it further to 44,334.55 hectares without elaborating whether this is the area what would be subjected for referendum. In other words, the farmers were all left out in the sharing of the proceeds of those portions that were sold.
The question is, if ordinary land owners are prohibited from selling in whole or in part the property which is the subject of land reform, then how come the owners of Hacienda Luisita were allowed to dispose those prime portions of the land leaving those considered of less value to be included in the referendum?
Assuming they could no longer be recovered, still the Supreme Court failed to order the accounting of the proceeds in the sale of those prime portions of the hacienda to give the aggrieved farmers the cash equivalent of what they lost. It cannot be denied that aside from having acted in bad faith, the owners of the hacienda managed to rake, and continue to rake in, much profit from the sale and lease of their properties now classified as out of reach for land distribution or for partnership with the farmers through that much-hooted SDO.
Indeed the decision has given the public clarity on how the magistrates acted miserably; that they could not be wrong in accusing them of playing footsy with politics. the judgment was not on how to realign the issues with what the law provides, but on something that would ensure their future accommodation with the President. ingratiate themselves as a bounty awaits them after retirement.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
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