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SAYING
that this year’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) of
President Arroyo will just be a parade of fake economic
gains and litany of lies, militant legislators said they
would boycott Monday’s Sona.
Party-list Reps. Satur Ocampo and Teodoro Casiño of
Bayan Muna, Rafael Mariano of Anakpawis and Liza Maza
and Luz Ilagan of Gabriela said the boycott would also
emphasize the government’s accountability for the
country’s worst political and economic crisis since the
Marcos years.
The
legislators said that Mrs. Arroyo’s Sona is different
from previous ones because “she will no longer hide her
failure in governance by citing glowing economic figures
or cheap politicians’ tricks.”
“Not
even Manny Pacquiao’s presence in the gallery will give
the President the respect that she desperately craves,”
the legislators said in a news conference.
Casiño
said the last few months have revealed the plain and
simple truth about the country’s economy, which,
allegedly, is so weak and highly vulnerable to external
shocks due to the administration’s failed policies of
economic liberalization, deregulation and privatization.
“Such
neoliberal economic policies have drastically reduced
the government’s responsibility and capacity to shield
the people from the rapacious forces of free-market
globalization,” Casiño said.
“Mrs.
Arroyo’s push for the enactment of the Epira in 2001, of
RVAT and other new taxes in 2005, and her continued
pursuance of other neoliberal policies have all
heightened the miseries of the poor and the middle
class,” he added.
These
policies, he said, include the deregulation of the oil
industry, the reduction of tariffs on imported
agricultural and manufactured goods, the removal of
subsidies for small farmers and agricultural producers,
the liberalization of the financial system and
the continued payment of all public debts, including
odious and illegitimate debts at the expense of the
budgets for education, health, housing and other social
services, which have been declining since 2001.
For his
part, Mariano is asking where is the food for every
table that Mrs. Arroyo bragged in her first Sona.
“Instead, famine is on the horizon due to Mrs. Arroyo’s
antipoor, distorted and proven bankrupt agricultural
trade-liberalization and importation policies,” Mariano
said.
Mariano
cited the latest Social Weather Stations survey which
showed that 16.3 percent of families nationwide,
equivalent to 2.9 million households or around 14.5
million people, experience involuntary hunger today.
He said
the country’s rice situation remains in jeopardy because
of the administration’s unsustainable and wrong approach
to the crisis.
Maza
said Mrs. Arroyo can claim to have successfully achieved
her Sona targets year after year, but still the fact
remains that rice prices have soared 100 percent since
she first came into power in 2001.
“The
economy has been [going] downhill since President Arroyo
assumed office in 2001. The price of gasoline and diesel
in January 2001 was at P16.56 and P13.82, respectively.
Today, it has increased by as much as 380 percent to 420
percent and is pegged at P62 and P58, respectively.
Seven years ago, the daily cost of living for a family
of six was at P420, today it is at P894,” Maza said.
Meanwhile, in response to the grave economic crisis
facing the country, the legislators vowed to pursue
immediate measures in Congress as they urge their
colleagues to defy Malacañang and support much-needed
reforms.
They
include the removal of the VAT on oil and power; the
repeal of the Oil Deregulation Act and enactment of
pending measures regulating the oil industry, buying
back Petron and mandating the centralized procurement of
crude and petroleum products; passing the proposed Rice
Industry Development Act based on the principle of
self-sufficiency; government support to farmers in terms
of credit, sustained subsidy for production inputs,
irrigation and post-harvest facilities, among others;
and a legislated wage hike of P125 a day and P3,000 a
month for private and public-sector workers,
respectively. |
