Justice is beyond the courts

Justice is beyond the courts

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 01-07-2015 WED)

 

Monday morning I joined the different Bayan groups in filing the motion to stop the mass transit system fare increases imposed by the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC).  In an update the day later I was told that the Supreme Court (SC) would convene on January 9 to consider the matter.

 

The filing of the motion, assisted by the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), was a significant act that succeeded in galvanizing public opinion against the fare hikes.  It shed light on the fraudulent claims of government in justifying the fare increases and exposed the scams behind the build-lease-transfer scheme engineered by Philippine finance oligarchs in cahoots with their controlled politicians.

 

While the TRO on the MRT fare hike is awaiting the SC’s deliberations, another court has decided that the 2013 water rate hikes implemented by the two private water concessionaires for Metro Manila and its environs--acts that were deemed illegal by the water regulatory agency, Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) due to disallowed charges to water consumers (such as the corporate income taxes of the two companies)--are to be upheld.  This court, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), is the arbitration venue that the two private firms, namely, Maynilad and Manila Water, brought their case to in 2013 and which this column predicted that same year would decide against consumers’ interest.

 

Water rate hikes for the opening of the year 2015 now consist of a double whammy--the first from the Foreign Currency Differential Adjustment (FCDA) clause of the concession agreements despite the peso strengthening against most currencies (that is, hikes up to P9.12/30 cu. m.) and the second, the 2013 water rate hike upheld by the ICC arbitration court in a decision dated Dec. 29, 2014 as Filipinos were preparing for New Year’s celebrations, announcing that “the Appeals Panel... upheld the alternative rebasing adjustment of Maynilad.”  As a result, the company’s stock price went up, and Filipino water consumers will now pay a 9.8-percent increase on P31.28/cu. m.

 

The other private company’s appeal with the same body is awaiting decision early this year and is expected to favor the water oligarchs again.  Manila Water in 2013 proposed a P5.83/cu. m. increase in its basic water charge of P24.57/cu. m., although then it was ordered by MWSS to reduce tariffs by P7.24/cu. m. due to disallowances of many of its expenditures.

 

All these increases will become retroactive and charged on a “staggered” basis, supposedly to mitigate the negative impact on consumers and the economy.  That they have to “stagger” the rate hikes shows that these water companies and the MWSS know how debilitating these increases will be for Filipino households.

 

The effect of all these rate hikes will be a further erosion of the purchasing power of the Filipino working classes and a dampener to consumer spending on other commodities that would have otherwise fueled a wider base of the productive economy.  The little hopes of consumer upticks from the oil price crash dividend would be significantly wiped out by these increases in water and the MRT-LRT fares, and more of the poorest would be alienated from these basic services.

 

This is simply a suicidal economic policy designed to sate the greed of transnational financial oligarchs, who continue to be fed by the prevailing economic paradigm of privatization and globalization made into law by our legislature.

 

While the ICC arbitration court has confirmed our prediction that any consumer welfare case raised before it will inevitably lead to defeat and satisfaction of the global financial oligarchy’s interest, the Philippine courts still present an image of reliability.

 

However, from my experience in raising such issues before the SC, we, consumers, lose 9 out of 10 cases; and the one case we would win would be a Solomonic decision in favor of the oligarchs--such as the December 2013 case of “market manipulation” by a power distributor, which the SC treated only as a “market failure,” with the culprits getting off without even a slap on the wrist.

 

Still, raising these consumers’ issues before the courts generates enough public interest, raises the level of public consciousness, and prepares us for the next level of collective action that could someday lead to real physical occupation of the political and economic spaces by the people and their genuine avatars.

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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Putin seals US fate

Putin seals US fate

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-22-2014 MON)

 

The US is engaging Russia in a three-pronged attack: economic sanctions and currency assault; a massive information war; and political-military pressures on the Ukrainian front.  The latest eruption of the conflict is in the currency markets where US-led currency attacks on Russia caused a 60-percent fall of the ruble, whereupon the information war follows targeting President Vladimir Putin for regime change.

 

Some mainstream Philippine writers and members of the intelligentsia are acting like rah-rah cheerleaders for the US in lambasting Putin, the same way they did against Gaddafi and other victims of their principal’s regime change efforts.

 

A UP Professor, writing in the Diliman Book Club Facebook page, blamed the currency fall on oligarchs Putin allegedly installed.  The professor should have known better; it is Putin who’s been rolling back the power of the oligarchs installed by the West during the incumbency of its puppet, the wino Boris Yeltsin (chief of whom was Mikhail Khodorovsky, whose ante to take over Russian State assets was funded by Western financial mafiosos like George Soros and the Rothschilds).

 

Khodorovsky, like other oligarchs such as Boris Beresovsky, were later pursued by Putin’s anti-corruption campaign.  They were either jailed or went into exile in the West.

 

The Philippine Star’s Alex Magno gloated over the 60-percent fall of the Russian ruble and the prospects of turning this against Putin for a “color revolution.”  Magno, as usual, displayed total ignorance of the facts: Russia has $450 billion in forex reserves, which was reduced only to $415 billion in the current currency-attack-induced crisis; Russia has a current account surplus of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to the US’ deficit of 2.5 percent of GDP; Russian government debt to GDP ratio is at 13.5 percent while the US’ is at 105 percent; and Russia has one of the largest gold hoards to back its currency while US gold cannot even be found in Fort Knox.

 

Certainly, Russia is undergoing a crisis--as Russia under Putin makes the decisive shift away from becoming part of a Western European civilization that has treated Russia as a Eurasian version of its hillbilly cousins from the Siberian boondocks while coveting the Russian Federation’s unimaginable oil, gas, and timber wealth.

 

In turn, Putin has made a tectonic shift to become part of the new “multipolar world,” in partnership with the real “rest of the world,” i.e. China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and many others now gravitating around the 21st Century real power--the economic alliance of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the geostrategic alliance of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), which India is joining.

 

China, through several of its information arms, such as the Global Times, has signaled its readiness to assist Russia in its momentary currency crisis.  Cheng Yijun of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing said, “If the Kremlin decides to seek assistance from Beijing, it’s very unlikely for the Xi leadership to turn it down... This would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate China is a friend indeed, and also its big power status.”  But Russia has more than enough resources to deal with this US economic-currency attack--and is militarily even more prepared.

 

Russia in Yeltsin’s time (under Western economic planners Jeffrey Sachs et al.) was designed to be a raw materials provider to Western Europe, one that purchases all its needs from the West.  Back then, Russia exported oil and imported everything else, much like how the Philippines exports OFWs and imports even “patis.”

 

Now we read in Russian economic discussions the concept of “import substitution” where Russia will produce what it needs and generate jobs that way, and buy the rest from non-Western sources, such as fish from Chile (instead of Norway) and apples from China (instead of Poland), cars from South Korea and China (instead of Europe), etc.

 

Still, pro-Western zombies in the Philippines choose to tout a lot of nonsense.  They bemoan the impact of a Russian debt default, not saying that the impact will be on Western banks that have relied on Russian oil giants’ loans to rake in mega-profits, as what Alex Magno worried about in his last column.

 

Instead, geopolitical export Pepe Escobar warns that Putin can even unleash “black swans,” like postponing Russian corporate debt payments by a year and two, which would collapse Western banks a la Lehman Brothers in the Wall Street debacle of 2008.

 

The truth is US sanctions are hurting Europe as badly as Russia; the only problem is Europe is politically unable to reject such suicidal sanctions.

 

While Magno cites US tech firm Apple stopping its sales in Russia, he should be made aware that Daimler-Benz and many European companies are going to set up factories in Russia to skirt these sanctions.

 

So as the US and its neocons don’t give a hoot about the global economy, so long as they can trigger more wars to feed their military-industrial-finance behemoth, Putin, a.k.a. St. Vladimir, is also driving the stake through the beast’s heart.

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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2014: Year of RP political chaos

2014: Year of RP political chaos

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-15-2014 MON)

 

Turmoil everywhere in 2014, from East Ukraine, the Middle East, all the way to Asia, has kept this column focused on global events.  Little understood by many Filipinos, though, the impact of such events in relation to the Philippines has been immense, like this deeply palpable effect on oil prices that many should thank countries fighting US hegemonism for.  Oil export-dependent Russia, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela are the real targets of this latest US-Saudi financial siege that aims to buckle these countries’ economic knees.  Filipinos are just short-term accidental winners in this phase of geopolitical struggles.

 

Moreover, this column has missed commenting on the Philippine scene for weeks on end because the domestic political situation at this stage is a confused mess.  The political waters have been terribly muddled by a year of confused, contradictory, and illusory anti-corruption campaigns by BS Aquino that smacked of selective, partisan justice and injustice, as well as prosecution and persecution.  Still, high public expectations are raised for more corruption revelations against all (including administration) politicians, with the political storms somehow leveling the playing field for a much needed diversity of presidential aspirants--or so we think.

 

I am in a special quandary over the splintering of the anti-Gloria Arroyo coalition that helped define the past decade.  That decade of struggle molded much of my political ideology today: Edsa Tres and the struggle of the masses against the manipulation, exploitation, and oppression of the oligarchy and its US partner; the unmasking of the Yellows’ hypocrisy and corruption; the restoration of the central role of the State in promoting the general welfare against the power of the privileged few; and the preservation of the nation’s interest against the onslaught of predatory free-trade and globalization programs.

 

While issues and policy questions matter most, and personalities rank a very far second (if at all), personalities still embody issues and policies, which sometimes political personalities do not completely appreciate themselves.  Thus, when VP Jejomar Binay was under siege, I thought it mattered immensely that he translate the imbroglio into policy debate, which was why I wrote, “Polarize: Binay’s only way.”  But that didn’t happen and Binay even visited Aquino.  The debate with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV could have also been an opportunity, but this, too, has not come about.  At one point business tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan was even broached as a potential VP to Binay; that certainly swamped the Edsa Tres ideal.

 

I also note President-Mayor Joseph Estrada’s inclusion in the last “presidentiables” survey, which placed him fourth, despite his non-interest.  Erap still embodies many of the ideals that led voters to give him the 1998 presidency, which also led to his unconstitutional 2001 ouster.  The ideals: fierce nationalism (prompting US plots against him); moral honesty (earning the ire of religious hypocrites); a deep sense of fairness that opposed “sovereign guarantees” to Big Business (alienating foreign and local oligarchs); and political-military decisiveness that vanquished the Moro Islamic Liberation Front at Abubakar (but irking the group’s US backers).

 

A key ally of Edsa Tres was the Bagong Katipunero (BK), now known as Magdalo, and its leader Sen. Trillanes, who spent over seven years in detention in opposing the unconstitutional Arroyo presidency.  The BK or Magdalo was a movement of no less than 300 young officers; and many are still in the service.  Certainly, the Magdalo has risen to prominence (having two party-list representatives) with the impetus from fighting alongside Estrada; but for which they have also sacrificed and worked very hard (building a card carrying membership of over 300,000 to date).

 

Internal struggles in the anti-Arroyo movement surfaced during the Manila Peninsula incident.  Several major opposition factions saw divergent final strategies to wrest power after the 2007 elections trounced Arroyo’s legitimacy.  Realignments ensued in the 2010 elections that saw Erap coming from behind, almost winning.  The oligarchs, true to form, favored BS Aquino; hence, the untouchability of their growing mono/oligopolies (particularly in power) today.  But one can argue that Smartmatic-PCOS (and US-controlled Dominion Voting Systems) actually “won” the elections.  There began the 60-30-10 manipulation in 2013 to put one senatorial puppet on top and primed for 2016.

 

It’s a wonder why candidates are jockeying for the presidency when the Smartmatic-PCOS problem has not been resolved at all. Is it sane and logical to take the Commission on Elections and its so-called preparations seriously while this problem festers?

 

The Philippines should go back to manual voting and then electronic transmission of precinct counts.  A host of countries, notably Germany, have either gone back to manual voting and counting, or, like Australia, have stuck to the manual system.  Hopefully, 2015 will be a year of domestic political crystallization--starting with a return to manual voting and a convergence of revolutionary ideals.

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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