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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Wenceslao: An E-VAT worry
By Bong O. Wenceslao
I received this week my electricity bill for the month, and the Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) ordered me to pay P875 within 10 days or else...Well, I still have to visit the Veco branch in Tabunok, the one relatively nearest my Minglanilla residence. I am a 15-30 man; meaning, I get my salary on those dates every month. Only then can I pay Veco.
Actually, the P875 is up from the P750 monthly the power firm used to bill me some four months ago. Why I have to pay more when my power consumption has not increased bugs me. But that is not all. After the Supreme Court declared the Expanded Value-Added Tax (E-VAT) as constitutional, I expect to breach the P1,000 level soon.
Still, the country's economic managers are telling me this will be good for me in the long run. Their mantra: "This is a bitter pill we have to swallow." "We have to tighten our belts for the common good." Consider: The Arroyo administration stands to earn P35.12 billion in income from E-VAT nationwide, easing its financial burden by 1997.
Good? Consider this. According to a World Bank study in 2000, government lost about $48 billion to corruption over a 20-year period.
The US-based bank Morgan Stanley placed the losses at $204 billion between 1965 and 2001. So how much of the E-VAT I pay will fill the pockets of corrupt public officials?
***
The activity was small but media coverage made it big. I am referring to that protest action held by the opposition at the St. Michael the Archangel parish church on J.P. Laurel St. in Manila the other day. I watched the footage on that "mass-cum-protest" and there they were: Ernesto Maceda, JV Ejercito, Jejomar Binay, Sandra Cam.
The St. Michael the Archangel parish is considered part of the Malacañang compound. Thus Maceda gloated: "Last month we were in Ayala, last week in Recto and Mendiola. We hope to be inside Malacañang someday." When I heard that, my hair stood on its end. Those people ruling over us? Uh-oh.
***
Its failure to mount a strong challenge to President Arroyo's rule has made the political opposition increasingly dependent on some religious elements and their rituals. Take the call for snap elections that used the names of Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and Bro. Mike Velarde of El Shaddai.
Vidal has dissociated himself from the call, but those behind it already benefited from the misappropriation of his name. Then there are the rituals: prayer mass-cum- protest, religious procession-cum protest march. Actually, I don't have quarrel with that because the anti-Marcos struggle benefited from them.
My beef is with the people these religious personalities and rituals are propping up.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/0927-2055064)
(October 26, 2005 issue)
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