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Events during the past few months, both locally and abroad, have
contributed to the difficult situation the Philippines is now in.
Some sectors are now even saying that the country is in its worst
crisis in 30 years.
The cost of imported crude oil is now the
highest in history and the price of rice has tripled or quadrupled
in the world market. A slow but continued weakening of the peso
caused the inflation rate to go up to 8.3 percent in April, the
highest in three years.
If the peso will weaken further to P50 or P56,
which was what it was worth a year ago, and the price of crude oil
will continue to rise to $200 per barrel, as predicted by some
analysts, we will really be in a very grave situation.
Our predicament is compounded by the economic
slowdown in the United States, our biggest trading partner. If this
continues, the 7.3 percent growth we registered in 2007, the highest
in 31 years, could be wiped out in a wink.
Gobbledygook
Just as we thought that we would now be spared
by the antics of two of the administration’s certified
tormentors—Senators Panfilo Lacson and Alan Peter Cayetano—with
the mothballing of the ZTE-NBN probe, now comes Senate Minority
Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. reviving the federalism initiative.
The moment Congress starts debating on the
proposal, public opinion would again be polarized and the country
divided.
Pimentel, who obviously wanted to be remembered
in history not as the gentleman who held the microphone to then Vice
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when the latter was installed as
the new president on that faithful day in Jan. 20, 2001 but the
father of federalism, has reintroduced the idea as the cure-all for
the country’s ills.
Pimentel and his ilk, after having served in the
government of “imperial Manila” for many years, are now saying
that it is time to subdivide the country into several federal states
to speed up its development.
Federalism would certainly hasten not the
development of the country but its disintegration. It will result in
the balkanization of the Philippines, which was founded as one
cohesive state through the blood and tears of our forebears.
No wonder, Nur Misuari was seen grinning when he
discussed the federalism idea recently with Speaker Prospero
Nograles. Because what is our guarantee that a federal Muslim
Mindanao state would not secede from the Philippines given the open
call for secession by two Muslim rebel groups, one led by Misuari?
We must remember that Misuari is still influential in the
Organization of Islamic Conference and he could easily get its
backing for an independent Islamic state in Mindanao.
Definite actions needed
After protracted public hearings on the
Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), the Senate
has relegated the all-important treaty to the backburner.
This was done after the Department of Foreign
Affairs has indicated that the Japanese government is not inclined
to sign side agreements to the pact which, according to Sen. Miriam
Defensor-Santiago, chairman of the Senate foreign relations
committee, were necessary to correct some of the treaty’s
perceived constitutional infirmities. Of course this was the
expected reaction from Japan because its Diet has ratified the
treaty without any side documents a long time ago.
Nobody knows when the treaty will be submitted
to the Senate plenary for concurrence.
This is unfortunate because the JPEPA would have
been our best insurance for continued expansion of our export trade,
Japan being our second largest trading partner and, unlike the US,
is not experiencing a creeping recession.
Roxas proposal
It is time for both houses of Congress to
urgently consider the proposal of Sen. Mar Roxas for a suspension of
the 12 percent expanded value added tax or EVAT on oil.
Roxas made this proposal last year when the
price of crude oil was only $90 per barrel; now its is more than
$120 per barrel.
According to Roxas, the EVAT on oil earns some
P40 billion annually for the government, so a suspension of six
months would mean a drain of P20 billion from the public coffers.
But, he said, this can be easily offset by
expanded economic activities because of lower fuel costs, not to
mention the relief on consumers from soaring prices of essential
commodities, the manufacturing of which are all oil-based.
When the EVAT law was deliberated in Congress,
the price of crude oil in the world market was only $50 per barrel.
Now that it has reached more than $120 per barrel, the government
has already collected a windfall in taxes. Isn’t it time to give
this back to the people in the form of lower fuel costs?
opinion@manilatimes.net
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