BY ANAKPAWIS PARTY-LIST
Posted by Bulatlat
Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran last week expressed alarm that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was seriously hallucinating. Given this, he said that she “must immediately step down on the grounds of mental incapacity.”
“This is one more compelling reason why she should step down from office. Not only is Mrs. Arroyo widely acknowledged to have cheated her way to a second term, abused her powers for corruption and initiated a brutal campaign of extra-judicial killings, she is now mentally incapacitated.”
This was Beltran’s reaction to the statement issued by Macapagal-Arroyo that the Philippines now has “surplus money to build schools and infrastructure, expand public health services, and create more jobs.”
“This is a tale on par with Alice in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series,” said Beltran. “It’s simply fantastic. How Mrs. Arroyo can say all this with a straight face and expect the public to believe it is ludicrous.”
The veteran labor leader turned lawmaker and now political detainee said that Macapagal-Arroyo’s elation over Moody’s Investors Service’s upgrade of the country’s credit ratings was most troubling.
“This is what Mrs. Arroyo is pegging her hopes for the country on? An improved credit rating? Hundreds of Filipinos are losing their jobs every day, there’s widespread and increasing incidence of hunger and hundreds of thousands more have no access to the most basic social services such as healthcare, education and housing, yet here is Mrs. Arroyo crowing over an improved credit standing. This characterizes the Arroyo administration all over: twisted economic priorities, skewed and delusional perception of social realities that all result in a more wretched situation for the Filipino people.”
Beltran said that the Arroyo administration has manipulated facts and figures to hide the true extent of poverty in the country and to project an improved fiscal situation. “This administration, so wracked by political conflict and incapable of initiating genuine economic reforms, has taken drastic feats of numerical and statistical manipulation to create a more business-friendly climate. It set an unrealistically low poverty threshold figure of P33.72 ($0.68, based on an exchange rate of P49.69 per U.S. dollar) a day or P202.32 ($4.07) for a family of six; hence, Filipinos who earn this much would no longer be considered poor. Because of this, the government was able to lower the poverty incidence as affecting only 30 percent (of the population). The government uses this figure to justify low wage rates that foreign investors find most attractive.”
Beltran also said that in truth, 80 percent of Filipino families fall below decent living standards. “Macapagal-Aroyo’s rosy illusions and projections are actually based on harsh realities. Her government continues to make high borrowings to promote the image that there’s economic growth. Annual net borrowing rose from P175 billion ($3.52 billion) in 2001 to P219.4 billion ($4.41 billion) in 2005 while annual payments jumped from P274 billion ($5.51 billion) in 2001 to a staggering P679 billion ($13.66 billion) in 2005.”
Citing statistics from IBON Foundation, Beltran said that the administration also spent less on vital social services. “In the last past five years, the Arroyo government’s actual expenditure outlay for social services has continually decreased. Education fell by 5 percent and health is 19 percent less,” he said.
Posted by (Bulatlat.com)
