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Saturday, November 05, 2005
Roperos: Shaming market vultures
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
What most of us can do in the face of the current national condition is to inspire a sort of fatalistic attitude within ourselves. That is, accept without umbrage what the nation’s leadership offers its people as the most tenable solution to a nagging national problem.
The E-Vat, renamed Reformed Value Added Tax (RVAT) is the Arroyo administration’s last card to regain ascendancy in both the domestic and the international landscape. The problem is that the gains President Arroyo is trying hard to get in relation to the Philippines’ capability to repay its debts is equated with the possible misery these may cause the nation’s low-income group.
Which is the reason why there is a strong, developing adverse reaction from the masses, something that the political opposition and cause-oriented detractors are whipping up to topple Arroyo from the presidency. Fortunately for her, the masses do not seem about to follow the lead of the opposition, the radical left and disgruntled civil society.
On the 5th day of the RVAT implementation, people appear to be getting the hang of the “pain and misery.” Perhaps, eventually they would learn to accept it as part of the imperatives of survival as a nation.
This assertion, though, should not be taken as a favorable stand on the issue. It is but an expression of hope that what negative prognosis had been made by anti-VAT militants would not turn out true and the “masses” who stands to benefit from its success would learn to cotton to it.
But human nature being the way it is, the yen to make easy profits among some of our brethren out of the misery of the many cannot totally be contained.
Which is obviously the reason why Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has come up with a strategy to discourage potential “vultures” among members of the business sector, particularly the wholesalers and the retailers that are the frontline outlets of basic commodities.
But the “shame campaign” the mayor has conceived need the cooperation of consumers as informers. The five or so billboards City Hall plans to set up in strategic places of the city would not have anything on them unless the people would be alert enough to report anyone who takes advantage of the situation.
They should report anyone who has bloated the price of any basic item in his or her store. This would also open the eyes of our indifferent citizens to the reality that good governance is not alone the responsibility of those elected or appointed into office.
During World War II, weeks before the actual war broke out between the United States and Japan, and in anticipation of the high possibility we would be drawn into it, women public school teachers were organized into the so-called Ladies Loyalty League.
The male teachers were enlisted into the volunteer guards to secure the town from infiltration of the enemy at night, under cover of darkness. One of the ladies’ activities was to act as anti-profiteers, watching all wholesale and retail outlets in our town.
I recall this now because it is the similar alertness and participation that is needed in these times. The point is, until we find the new tax law truly oppressive that we have to junk it or discover that it is truly good that we have to retain it, we need first to cooperate with the administration.
(November 5, 2005 issue)
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