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Toward the Goliath-oligarchy’s fall DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel 03/12/2010

Friday, March 12, 2010


Toward the Goliath-oligarchy’s fall


DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
03/12/2010

While the nation is regaled by headlines that portray a climactic horse race between the so-called top candidates, stories that touch on the erosion of the Filipino’s quality of life are relegated to the marginal pages. BizNews Asia in its March edition reported: “Meralco profits (2009) up 169 percent to P7B thanks to higher rates, governance.” Doesn’t it make you wonder how Meralco can get such whopping profits in the midst of one of the worst economic downtrends in decades? Is it ethical or even moral? Does it make any sense for anyone to amass such drastically increasing power generation and distribution profits while the economy struggles to stem the tide of unemployment and industry-wide decay? This is so wrong, it has been going on for 25 years, made worse in the last five. As I fume over this, the public has yet to rise up in arms.

Political elections are the cleverest invention of Western bourgeois oligarchs to abort, delay and postpone into perpetuity the necessary social revolutions to bring man and society into higher states of development. Revolution in the Philippines — the wresting of power from the multinationally-controlled oligarchy to equalize wealth distribution — is imperative if this nation is to grow. Change toward a social-market society a la Singapore must proceed versus the exploitative neo-colonial, oligarchic society (a la Honduras) under which Filipinos suffer today. Sounds pedantic? This will never ever be mentioned in Willie Revillame’s noontime show or at Quiboloy’s presidential debates. It grates me that all media’s election coverage does is distract from this instead of promote it.

By the end of March, my electricity bill and everyone else’s will rise by a whopping amount. The generation charge will be 20 percent over previous bills, and the cause of this, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes says, is none other than God, as he exclaimed: Go blame Him for El Niño. Some will be praying to that God of Angelo Reyes, like the Aboitizes whose generator set imports are again enjoying boom sales in Mindanao and all over the country as terrorized businessmen fear the brownouts set up their own standby electricity — just as it was in the time of Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos when Aboitiz was appointed to head the National Power Corp. and the Dark Ages of blackouts in the Philippines ensued. That’s the God of Edsa I and II, isn’t it? The God to whom that graven image on the Edsa Shrine holds its hands up to and Catholic priests burn incense for, as the poor masa continue to suffer from worsening hunger.

BizNews magazine has a feature on all the presidential candidates. But scanning all its articles for any statement on the power issue, I find only this: “Lowering electricity rate(s) will also help exporters to be competitive in the world markets.” Guess who said it? None other than candidate Joseph Estrada. The nation should be reminded that one of the reasons Estrada was deposed was his opposition to precipitate rate increases in electricity and water. That Estrada reiterates it today is of overwhelming importance. His campaign managers must therefore appreciate how important this will be in the months leading up to the polls. Ninety million Filipinos will wake up at the end of this month seething from their power bills, and will seethe for at least four months more until the rains save them from the greed and incompetence of Angelo Reyes’ “God.”

Daggers in my mind rise when I recall the 25 years of this nation’s tribulations, reflected in my own journey as head of family and a regular businessman trying to prevail against endless rising costs, taxes, oligarchic and government corruption, and the futility of our elections. Whenever the people’s will is truly reflected in an election, the oligarchs depose the leader.

This campaign season, the oligarchs are again manipulating the media and mass consciousness with skewed surveys in trying to eliminate the genuine opposition candidate, Estrada. Meanwhile, their 10-year puppet, Gloria, is carving a haven for herself in Congress by staffing it with her own apostles like Reyes. Gloria is just being truthful when she says that it’s going to be a smooth transition — to more of the same but with a new face of Villarroyo or the Yellow dummy. Well, not if the masa can help it.

The masa and the middle class have one weapon against the oligarchs — their greed. Like the menacing stone that embodies the power rate hikes, we must rise up with the backlash against it and hurl that stone back at the very center of the Goliath-oligarchy’s head. Let’s take aim now and let nothing else distract us. When the oligarchs fall, their little Yellow dummies and puppets fall as well.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Suló ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21, Talk News TV, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on “The Energy Crisis Hoax”; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)

SourceThe Daily Tribune

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