Ombion: Substantive change
SUBSTANTIVE change. This is what the people expect and need from the new administration of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (PBBM) – a substantive rebound from a life made more miserable under the so-called pandemic despite the billions spent on it.
Anywhere I go in the country, the cries and the rumblings on the ground are deafening.
The majority of the marginalized and vulnerable cry for improvement in their quality of life, peace and security in the environment they live in -- not promises, fantasies, hot-air and lip service, hodgepodge meals.
The micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and informal entrepreneurs, the most numerous business force, are groaning from the worsening economic crisis and its crippling impact on them, higher costs of services, and more retrogressive taxes, declining incomes, depleting savings.
The small agricultural producers including artisanal fishers are agonizing from soaring costs of farm inputs, post-harvest expenses, and low prices of their products.
The low-income middle class and city odd-jobbers can hardly cope with their basic needs.
Worse, the increasing unemployed labor force, which is now edging 40 percent of the labor force, increases the risk of anti-social and criminal activities to escalate. The poor on the street and even those with formal education don’t need higher degrees in economics and development to see and feel the flaws in the government's fundamentals.
The state neoliberal economic policies of liberalization of deregulating or removing state laws and restrictions on agriculture, services and industries to allow market forces to dictate supply and demand like what happened to our oil industry now controlled by the oil cartel, the massive importation of rice and rice tariffication, giving foreign monopoly companies to control hundred percent of our vital industries, among others, are simply destructive.
The state campaign of privatization, that of surrendering vital state industries and utilities like water, energy and transportation to private companies is wreaking havoc on our consumers and Filipino entrepreneurs. These policies began three decades ago, followed a non-interventionist approach to economic activities and touted to spur growth, better allocation of resources, and accelerate poverty reduction -- plainly bringing the opposite –- more plunder of our resources and impoverishment of our people. Ibon Foundation is right and sharp in its analysis that the economic top guns of the PBBM administration are no mavericks, and will only pursue the same plunderous and destructive economic policies of the past administrations. This early, PBBM and his team have not lifted a finger on the havoc caused by unabated oil price hikes, instead, focusing on planning to get more state loans and further squeeze the people with more debilitating taxes. These they do while they good time a small fraction of the consumers in the National Capital Region with token-free train and free bus rides, and media-hyped dole out cash assistance. Nationalist economist Alejandro Lichauco was right in his assertion that under the Philippine conditions, which unfortunately have not changed substantially since the 80s, the only way for the state to move forward to agricultural and industrial development is to take effective control of the direction and management of the Philippine economy instead of allowing and watching idly big corporate companies rake super-profits from plundering our resources and bleeding our people dry.
The state’s full control of the country’s economy and economic thrust is the only way to effect substantive change. Anything less would only make the state, and so the administration of PBBM, a mere "tuta, errand boy" of the big corporate interests and swindlers, and limited to the old traditional functions of collecting taxes, repairing roads, delivering social services, giving donations, and worse, looting and pocketing public treasury. Unless this is stopped and reversed, the country’s economy and sovereignty are up on the road to final suicide.