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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Groups stress 'real state of the nation'
By Lory Ann B. Bilbao
OUR economy is yawning and Mrs. Arroyo is sinking together with the "bankang papel (paper boat)".
Advocacy group Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), among other groups which staged early morning rally yesterday at the onset of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's State of the Nation Address (Sona), noted this as the real state of the Nation instead.
The Iloilo Chapter of FDC together with the militant labor groups Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), the party-list Partido ng Manggagawa (PM), KPML, Women Rage and Sanlakas, held an early morning rally at the Jaycee Monument at the Plazoleta Gay, a convergence point of Iloilo's downtown area, and revealed PGMA's scorecard among the workers and the marginalized sectors.
The groups spoofed Arroyo's performance as "bokia and disconnected from the people."
FDC put forward the question: "What more can describe the state of our nation when it is characterized by massive poverty, unemployment and rising cost of basic commodities?
"This illustrates that the ‘bankang papel’ is sinking, drowning along with it are the hopes of the Filipino people for a better future, said Ted Aldwin Ong, deputy secretary-general of FDC.
In 2001, Arroyo paraded the three kids from Payatas: Jomar, Jason and Erwin, who reportedly made paper boats and had it floated towards Malacañang through the Pasig River with their hopes written on it.
Arroyo took advantage of their disturbing concerns and put it in the center of her Sona. Thus the theme: "Trabaho, Tahanan, Edukasyon, Pagkain sa Bawat Mesa."
"This is also the theme in Mrs. Arroyo's 2005 Sona that was titled 'Beat the Odds'. It focused on food in the table of every Filipino family, jobs creation, balanced budget, electricity and water for all, and education for all children of schools age," explained Ong.
FDC declared that the opposite is happening since Arroyo assumed power in 2001.
"The situation of every Filipino family today is far worse than in previous administrations as Mrs. Arroyo' targets in her 10-point agenda remain in the target board and have not been delivered as promised."
"The price of food and basic commodities today is beyond the buying capacity of our people. Price of canned sardines is now P11.00 as compared to P8.50 in 2003. The price of pork is now P140/kilo, which is P115 before. This is coupled with a series of fare hikes since 2001 and compounded by the imposition of a 12 percent Value-Added Tax on oil and power that harshly affected the lives of the people,” underscored Ong.
Data from FDC revealed that Arroyo has been failing in meeting its targets on creating employment, balanced budget, and stabilizing the cost of electricity.
“On jobs creation: Arroyo promised to create six to 10 million jobs for the next five years. This is equivalent to creating at least one to two million jobs a year or an equivalent of 2,739 to 5,479 jobs a day. Only a total of 2.939 million jobs were generated from April 2001 to April 2006 or an average of 489,833 a year,” Ong said.
“On balanced budget: Undeniably, the national government is thriving in debt. While there is an upward trend in revenue collection, government expenditures still exceed collected revenues. Between 2001 and 2005, the Arroyo administration earned an average of P650 billion from tax and non-tax revenues. But it spent an average of P828 billion, wiping out any savings with a whopping P179-billion deficit,” Ong added.
Ong said that the growing level of debt payments both for interest and principal payments means that government's scarce resources are even made scarcer because a huge chunk of this amount, averaging 63.60 percent, is automatically allocated to unproductive spending or automatically allocated for debt payments.
“On cost of electricity: The current power rate in the country is the 2nd highest in Asia, 3rd highest industrial electricity rates and 7th highest household electricity rates in the world,” Ong further stated.
Ong revealed that in the National Capital Region, the cost of power has doubled from P5/KWh before the signing of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) into law in 2001 to P9/KWh today. He said that the The Ilonggo consumers are also suffering the same fate under the Panay Electric Company and the electric cooperatives outside the city. Under Peco for instance, electricity rates has increased from P3.75/KWh in the last quarter of 2005 following the implementation of a reduction to P6.80/KWh Tuesday.
"The Arroyo administration failed to address the specific concerns of the Filipino poor on those specific targets, which she declared in 2005 as realistic and doable. What more can we expect on her other targets in her 10-point agenda,” said lawyer Romeo Gerochi, FDC-Iloilo's chairperson.
"The Filipino people demands economic relief from the current regime by giving our workers a P125 across the board increase and by lifting the imposition of VAT on oil and power,” stressed Ong.
The FDC is among the groups in the broad anti-GMA alliance Laban ng Masa who condemns the continued stay of Arroyo's and are demanding for her ouster.
(July 25, 2006 issue)
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