By Antonio Tinio
Representative Alliance of Concerned Teachers
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fifth State of the Nation Address (Sona) is a string of band-aid proposals that failed to address the root causes behind the most pressing demands of the Filipino people.
The public expected the President to decisively address large-scale corruption, particularly the role of Malacañang in the multi-billion peso flood control anomalies. Instead, Marcos merely boasted of the wheels of justice turning to apprehend lawmakers, while completely shielding the executive branch from accountability.
The big fish are not only in Congress or the Senate; they are in the Executive, which is exactly what the people are looking for. The people demand to know the role of Malacañang in the flood control scandal itself. There has been absolutely no investigation into the dismissed Cabinet Secretaries involved in this, nor into the President himself, despite several individuals pointing to him as being involved.
While Marcos claimed to have done everything to bring down the cost of oil, the government deliberately refused to repeal the Oil Deregulation Law or suspend and junk the oil excise tax and VAT on oil.
The President’s promise to expand the annual income tax exemption threshold to P350,000 for the middle class is inadequate. We have already filed a bill calling for a P500,000 cap on income tax exemptions. Furthermore, while Marcos touts lower corporate income tax and a general tax amnesty, he deliberately overlooks the need for genuine wealth redistribution.
On the power sector, instead of merely calling for the amendment of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), it should be junked as it has historically enabled private power monopolies to continuously burden consumers with high electricity rates. Removing systems loss charges is long overdue and will reduce rates for consumers. However, it does not address the main reason why we have to the second-highest rates in Asia - the ruthless privatization of the power sector due to Epira, which has left consumers at the mercy of predatory private corporations.
Regarding Marcos’s proposal to provide social security support from SSS, GSIS, and Pag-Ibig for workers, what the workers urgently need are substantial salary and wage increases, not mere conditional social security dole-outs that fail to address the daily erosion of their purchasing power.
Recent global crises, from the pandemic to the energy crisis brought about by the US war in Iran, have highlighted the need to develop self-sufficiency in manufacturing essential goods instead of relying on fragile global supply chains. Many countries, including our neighbors in Southeast Asia, are focused on developing their local industries to produce for the domestic market.
Unfortunately, President Marcos Jr. has no industrial policy for the country other than Pax Silica, which is manufacturing for the US defense industrial base. This is not industriaization for the needs of Filipinos but for the US war machine.
Beyond wages and corruption, the Filipino people are looking for concrete and long term solutions, not band-aid measures.
The public wanted the Sona to provide clear answers on the issues of salaries, education, improved health, and housing. Instead of privatization, deregulation, and subservient manufacturing, we need national industrialization, the return of basic utilities to the public sector, and living wages for all workers.
