High rice prices hurt the poorest Filipinos most

BECAUSE many officials of the Aquino administration are incompetent, negligent and guilty of corruption, the prices of the most basic commodities and household and personal needs have shot up during the four years that the son of the sainted late President Corazon Aquino and the martyred former senator Benigno Aquino has been the Philippine president and chief executive officer.

The prices of jeepney rides, the per kilowatt hour of electricity, liquid petroleum gas, candles, school supplies and food products—vegetables, eggs, chicken, pork, beef, canned goods, noodles in cups or in plastic bags, cooking oil, mongo beans, dried fish, and so on and so forth—are now beyond the reach of millions of our countrymen.