In a statement printed in the Philippine Star newspaper on September 21, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo urged her fellow citizens to "suffer the pain now and experience the gains two years hence [rather] than postpone the pain and die a painfuleconomic death two years from now".
The pain hapless, ordinary Filipinos are told to suffer comes in the form of new tax measures to the tune of P80 billion (about US$1.43 billion) a year Arroyo has asked Congress to enact posthaste. The sum amounts to 1.8% of the country's 2003 gross domestic product (GDP). The promised gain is uncertain at best: passage of the measures might forestall a threatened sovereign credit downgrade from the country's present rating, already two notches below investment grade.
Big bloody deal, say a large majority of Filipinos. A mid-September survey by the Manila-based Pulse Asia polling organization found that 78% of respondents "see no need to impose new taxes as long as the government strengthens its tax-collection efforts".
It's time to bell the cat. Who's to blame for running up the country's massive public debt to more than 70% of GDP, in spite of which abject poverty continues to increase; in spite of which some 27 million Filipinos (one-third of the population) have to subsist on less than a dollar a day; in spite of which Filipinos in ever-larger numbers are forced to leave the country to make a living and support the relatives they leave behind?
In an upcoming five-part series, Asia Times Online's Pepe Escobar explores both the makings and the makers behind the social catastrophe a once rich and promising nation (called "the next Japan" 40 years ago) has become. We won't preempt his findings but will note some equally astonishing and disturbing, but incontrovertible, facts.
These facts in combination define socially, economically and politically unsustainable circumstances and go a long way in explaining the persistent political turbulence of the past two decades. Time and again since the first so-called People Power revolt of 1986 that swept away the Ferdinand Marcos regime, the hopes and aspirations of the large majority of impoverished Filipinos have been thwarted. Neither Cory Aquino nor Fidel Ramos, who lifted Aquino into the presidency before becoming president himself, carried out the land-reform measures they had promised. What land reform was enacted was largely a sham. Aquino, who talked about it incessantly, still owns the huge hacienda that should have been one of the first reform targets. Most senators and congressmen are rich landowners and members of or hangers-on of the elite families that control the bulk of the nation's wealth. No one else can afford to run for office.
When the poor thought they had elected a president who would champion their cause, he was promptly overthrown by another People Power revolt organized by the elite families and the Church on charges of corruption, real or contrived. The person who was installed as president, Arroyo, now has won an election in her own right. A captive of the de facto feudal powers that be, she'll prove every bit as unwilling and unable to bring basic social and economic change as Aquino.
The Filipinos are a capable, well-educated, joyful people. Most who have settled abroad, escaped the misery of semi-feudal rule, and been given the opportunity to prosper have done so. But, of course, they can't all emigrate or become overseas workers. Ultimately, they will need to find the political means to rid themselves of the oppressive medieval structures that make their lives on Earth the equivalent of purgatory.
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