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ARROYO’S PRO-POOR PROGRAMMES LIKENED TO GAME SHOWS

“Like the ‘Wow-wow-wee’, Mrs. Arroyo is indoctrinating dependence on dole-outs and other such chance contributions. The results are but short-lived and do nothing to address or assuage our people’s grave poverty,” Anakbayan national chairman Eleanor de Guzman said.

She criticised Arroyo’s “spending spree” these past few weeks by promising billions of pesos worth of health insurance, rice, instant noodles as well as subsidised housing projects.

Flaunting fortune

“Where will these funds come from? Even Arroyo’s economic advisers do not have a clue. But that doesn’t stop Arroyo from maliciously flaunting fortune in our faces,” she said. Malacanang’s 35-billion peso pump-priming funds for the first quarter will mainly be reaped from additional expanded value added tax (e-VAT) collections, De Guzman said.

She added apart from taxation and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) remittances, the government does not have a sufficient revenue-generating scheme to boast of. “The Ultra tragedy proves the poorest of the poor do not have an inkling of supposed economic growth despite the Palace’s flowery boasts. Like game shows, they are superficially designed not for the poor’s economic ease but for exploitation of poverty to boost Arroyo’s continuously dwindling popularity ratings,” she said.

Mere lip service

She also criticised Malacanang’s proposed Charter change (Cha-cha) as another mere lip-service scheme for economic growth to uplift Arroyo’s image to foreign and private investors.

De Guzman said Cha-cha provisions from both the Consultative Commission (Con-Com) and the House proposals distinctly allow 100-per cent foreign-ownership of almost all of the Philippines’ natural and industrial resources. “These amendments present a clear and present danger to national patrimony, a tragedy waiting to happen to the lives of millions of impoverished families,” she said.

“If anything, the Ultra tragedy is also a wake-up call to all. We cannot just depend on government dole-outs and make do with luck-driven games of chance. The Arroyo administration is the greatest tragedy to all Filipinos. Let our calls for unity to support the victims of the Ultra tragedy be transformed into a call for unity to end this ill-fated regime,” De Guzman said.

Root causes of tragedy

As this developed, party-list Reps. Rafael Mariano and Crispin Beltran (Anakpawis) filed HR 1129, entitled “Expressing the Sense of the House for the Victims and Survivors on the Poverty-induced Stampede at the Philippine Sports Commission Arena (formerly Ultra) on Feb. 4, 2006, and Calling for Recommendatory Measures to Address the Root Causes of the Said Tragedy.”