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By ARNOLD PADILLA
To a certain degree, Executive Order 839 questioned the lies long peddled by the oil companies and staunch defenders of neoliberalism about neoliberal free market economics. If left unchallenged, EO 839 could become a precedent in policy making: that the government, in the name of public good and welfare, could take decisive action against abusive corporations.
By ARNOLD PADILLA
While it is supposed to be based on the Oil Deregulation Law, the executive order mandating the recent price rollback in effect puts into question the wisdom of oil deregulation. Moreover, the oil companies have found a way to offset whatever “losses” they would incur in Luzon due to the EO: by overpricing in the Visayas and Mindanao.
By GILL H. BOEHRINGER
By seeking to convince its readers that the effects of Ondoy were “felt equally by rich and poor” and that it was a “great equalizer,” the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the most influential newspaper in the Philippines, was attempting to bolster the view that the Filipino class system had nothing to do with the disaster, and that the lives of all Filipinos are shaped by the same forces of nature, even by fate or by God.
In the years ahead, the number and magnitude of disasters will increase with colossal human and economic losses. The task of rescue, recovery, relief and rehabilitation will have to fall more and more on the people themselves as they have in fact done in recent years.
By BENJIE OLIVEROS
The presence of US troops exemplifies and strengthens US domination of the Philippines. When the Philippines was named as “the coordinating country” of the US in its dealings with the Asean, it meant that Manila could be counted on to promote US interests not only in the country but in the whole region.
By the way Arroyo and her officials spent money left and right in paying for expensive meals and the plane fares and hotel accommodations of the whole entourage during its recent US trip, it seems as if they treat the nation’s coffers as their own expense account.
Cory Aquino has secured her place in history as a fighter of tyranny. If Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will not learn from the life and struggles of Cory Aquino, she will be relegated to the dustbins of history.
The regime would not veer away from the economic policies that Arroyo has implemented in the past. These are the very same policies that made the Filipino people vulnerable to the world economic crisis and to price manipulations and speculative attacks by corporations wanting to pass on the burden of the crisis to the people.
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