An expressways lie-in to freedom
What lightened up my day this week was an e-mail being circulated and reaching me, calling for organizing and mobilizing the people to protest against the tollways (North, South and other expressways) VAT. These tollways VAT impositions will again set off a chain reaction of price hikes, particularly in the food sector where our biyaheros of vegetable, pork, chicken, fruits and rice will be hit very hard again (on top of tong on the road and exorbitant toll fees). The latest SWS hunger survey again showed the hunger incidence on the historic high level, and this is certain to worsen with the tollways VAT imposition. I am very happy that the Bantay Gobyerno led by Ike Señeres, my fellow GNN (Global News Network presentor) is leading the protest organizing. Ike had started involving the provincial bus lines and I suggested we link up with the biyaheros. This is going to be a really good fight again. The war against unjust, onerous, oppressive taxes has been at the forefront of my struggles the past two decades. It all started with the ATM I organized, the Anti-Tax Movement way back in the early 1990’s when we voiced out the public opposition to the earliest version of the Value Added Tax disguised in the then Bobby de Ocampo-led Finance department’s CTRP, Comprehensive Tax R(d)eform Movement. I always added the letter “d” to emphasize the doublespeak that the IMF-WB hatchet men engage in when they speak of “reform” which actually means “deform.” From the progressive income taxation system we were led to the regressive VAT system that taxes consumers and, therefore, the middle and lower classes much, much more than the very rich which proportionately pay insignificant taxes as a result. The VAT has been expanded from luxury goods to a growing list of essential goods and services, to basic necessities such as power and water, and now they want to impose it on our tollways fees — which will actually add another layer to all other goods that need to traverse the expressways, goods and services already heavily loaded their individual VAT. Every time they expand VAT coverage and increase the VAT rate they say it is the last time they will do so, but that is always followed by a new excuse — such as the budget deficit, and then “Ondoy,” and now often we hear “Climate Change” — to increase and expand the VAT. It’s time we realize that is all a hoax and a scam, this VAT taxation, to keep the nation in permanent and ever deepening tax enslavement. It is the global oligarchs’ way to hoodwink nations into accepting self-destruction through financial starvation. The VAT goes mainly to payment of foreign and local debts incurred by government operating on a debt based monetary system. The Philippine government creates money and credit only from borrowing through T-bills and other instruments issued to private or Global Powers controlled multilateral financial institutions such as the IMF-WB (and often as investments of the WB’s arm, the IFC of International Finance Corp. which manipulates country projects through local agents such as, in the Philippines, Christian Monsod). This is no different from the US where the Federal government issues debt instruments too and borrows through the US Federal Reserve which is not federal but a private corporation. The Western dominated dollar-debt system is a huge financial con game built on the US military-coercion capabilities and political-economic blackmail of other nations. To break this enslavement requires us to inform the Filipino people that we do not need debt to create our nation’s money and credit. A truly patriotic, Filipino-loving leadership in government can and should create its own credit and money, just as Abraham Lincoln did during the American Civil War, the Greenback, and China after its 1949 Revolution, and other examples in history. Freedom from debt begins with self-sufficiency in the basic needs of the nation: Food, energy, industrial capacity. The Philippines is uniquely gifted to achieve all these with its natural resources — ample land and annual rain, all the mineral ores needed, geothermal and natural gas sources, an educated and resourceful nation. The only element lacking is government leadership and political will to develop and be free, and leadership arises only from the people in action. Soon after the election campaign, we hope to see the movement against the Expressway VAT pop up on the expressways and lie-in and stop traffic briefly to demonstrate the people’s rage against this tollways VAT: “Sobra na, Tama na.” The fight should be carried on to the halls of Malacañang and Congress whoever the occupants shall be. As it is happening in the US with the anti-tax “Tea Parties,” we must forge ahead with an Anti-Tax Movement revival in the Philippines — to lead the country out of financial, economic-political enslavement, and to fulfill its destiny as a progressive, dynamic, self-sustaining and dignified society. (Tune to 1098AM, Sulo ng Pilipino, M-W-F, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 on “Comelec Automation: Final Assessment” with Mano Alcuaz and Obet Versola, Talk News TV, Tuesday, 8:00 p.m. to 9 p.m. Visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com) (Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel) Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100423com5.html |
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