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The military on Friday dismissed fears that the
continuous rise in prices of food and fuel would trigger riots,
saying that would only happen under “extreme” conditions.
Said Romeo Prestoza, chief of the
Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, riots
are unlikely but may happen if rising costs disrupt food supply.
He added that at present, the
country can still cope with the situation.
“Riots might happen if your
money can’t buy anything anymore, [but] at present, our peso is
still capable,” Prestoza added.
Besides counterinsurgency, the
intelligence unit also monitors the food and energy situation in the
country, a mandate given to it by Executive Order 731 that was
issued on June 7.
Prestoza said that even in an
extreme supply crunch, Filipinos still have other options to secure
food and other basic necessities, like planting crops on idle lands
in the provinces.
The unit’s agents, he said,
have been attending seminars for them to detect signs of a possible
food crisis that may be brought about by the continuous increases in
prices.
Prestoza said his unit has not
formed a special team dedicated to food monitoring, because that is
already covered in its intelligence-gathering functions.
“With knowledge earned from the
Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy, our agents can
now use it in their intelligence operations,” he added.
Opposition voices
Sen. Francis Escudero criticized
the intelligence unit’s inclusion in the super body that will
monitor the local food and energy situation.
Intelligence groups are best
deployed against criminals who kidnap and rob people, not on
supposed victims of government inaction who suffer because of the
high prices of oil, rice and other basic goods, Escudero said.
“There is no need to spy on the
people to know what they feel during these hard times for their pain
is palpable, and their discontent is evident,” he added. “A
government that opts for the surveillance of people, instead of
solutions to the heavy burden on our backs is either ignorant of our
hardships or insensitive to it, or worse, both.”
While acknowledging that the
government has the duty to mitigate the current crisis and the right
to mobilize concerned agencies, Escudero pointed out that the
government is not lacking in civilian institutions that can be
tapped to ease the crisis in energy and food. The senator added that
the intelligence unit’s help is unnecessary.
United Opposition spokesman Adel
Tamano also scored Malacañang for its alleged failure to address
the looming economic crisis in the country.
In a statement, he said President
Gloria Arroyo’s “insensitive greed” was shown by her
insistence to continue imposing the expanded value-added tax (E-VAT)
on oil and petroleum-based products, adding that the Palace has
failed to come up with a plausible plan to prevent an economic
crisis.
“[For] Mrs. Arroyo, who claims
to be an economist, the lack of preparation for increased oil prices
is not only embarrassing, but also reinforces people’s doubts
about her competence, both in the field of economics and in terms of
leading the country,” said Tamano.
He added that the Arroyo
government has allegedly continued to ignore its accountability to
the Filipino people by “conveniently hiding behind world market
developments,” saying it has failed in its mandate, using the
global crisis as “a catch-all excuse for its mismanagement of the
economy.”
Various reports have quoted
experts saying the upward trend in fuel prices is likely to
continue.
“She can always blame the world
economy for it, but is that not her job to be able to foresee and to
plan for these events?” Tamano asked.
Mayor JV Ejercito of San Juan
City agreed, saying the Arroyo administration’s decision to hold
on to E-VAT on oil despite skyrocketing prices shows its supposed
greed for cash at the expense of the public.
Ejercito also criticized “plans
to give away dole-out subsidies from the P4-billion excess
collection from value-added tax on oil.”
Earlier, church leaders and
business groups such as the Federation of Philippine Industries
pushed for the reduction of VAT on oil from 12 percent to 10
percent.
The Philippine Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, the country’s biggest business group, does
not favor totally lifting the VAT on oil. The chamber’s energy
committee reported that the government can still earn revenues even
with E-VAT reduction.
--Jefferson Antiporda, Efren L. Danao, James Konstantin Galvez
and Jayson Cruz Luna
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