Labor Joins National Day of Action Against Aquino’s Emergency Powers

Labor Joins National Day of Action Against Aquino’s Emergency Powers

MILITANTS belonging to labor group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) held an early morning protest at Mendiola Bridge to jump start the nationally coordinated Day of Action against Aquino’s Emergency Powers organized by the Power to the People Coalition.

“The emergency powers granted by Congressional panel on Energy will not even make a dent on the power crisis ordinary folk like us wage-earners are painfully bearing for the past thirteen years,” Leody de Guzman chairman of BMP fearlessly forecasted. 

“Since the government has already erred in identifying the problem, whatever measures it will take borne out of the emergency powers shall miserably fail and will ultimately exacerbate and prolong the economic yoke the people have long been bearing,” he added. 

De Guzman was referring to the inception of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) in 2001 which allowed the “entry and the establishment of an oligopoly” wherein a very limited of powerful industry players are competing in the market. 

Other vital provisions of EPIRA include the self-inflicted prohibition to participate in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity, the deregulation of the entire power industry. It likewise directed the disposal of all the assets of the state-run NAPOCOR. 

“Whether they call it a power reserve deficit or a power supply deficit does not matter much because this is not the real predicament we are facing. Whether the officials admit it or not, the crux of the matter is that, these are mere products of the broken promises of EPIRA,” the labor leader alleged. 

De Guzman further explained that, “despite the declared intents of EPIRA which were the reliability, quality, security and affordability of the supply of electric power, not one of these goals has been met in the span of thirteen years of implementing an oppressive decree”. 

“Besides the obvious excesses of private sector participation in the power industry, the EPIRA is also the prime culprit in the electricity price manipulations which occurred last year due to the suspiciously-timed maintenance schedules of several power plants,” he claimed. 

“The clamor to repeal EPIRA is already deafening but still the government chooses to listen only to its patrons and not the heavily-burdened majority of our people,” he likewise asserted. 

De Guzman likened President Noynoy Aquino, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla and the Energy Regulatory Commission chair Zenaida Ducut to the three monkeys that see, hear and speak of no evils of EPIRA, consciously acting in favor of the corporate interests of the Aboitiz, Lopez and San Miguel Corporation. 

The BMP believes that electricity should be treated as a basic necessity ergo, must be one of the social services of the state to its people and not allow opportunistic companies to impose predatory electricity rates. 

“Once the emergency powers of Aquino are granted, it will make ordinary consumers more susceptible to price hikes due to electricity price manipulations, collusion with corrupt officials, lopsided contracts with private entities to name a few. All these are on top of the environmental carnage the House Joint Resolution shall trigger with the suspension of environmental laws,” said another BMP leader Gie Relova. 

. 

“Not unless the government swerves away from the neo-liberal policies of deregulation and privatization which feeds the unbridled appetite for profit of power companies, the people shall eternally bleed and endure unreliable and expensive electricity rates,” Relova warned. 

The militants warn that continued failure to address the institutional injustice inflicted by EPIRA upon the people will only contribute heavily to the building of critical mass not only against the market-driven EPIRA or the oligopoly but also towards Aquino’s elitist and callous regime.

BMP on the anniversary of Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan: To be resilient is to fight back

BMP on the anniversary of Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan:

To be resilient is to fight back

A year ago today, Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan forcefully reminded us that our people can take no shelter from the storm for as long as we have a government for the elites rather than a government for our people; that we are at the mercy of the forces of nature for as long as our society remains organized to pursue profits rather than to care for each other.

We watched in horror as the Aquino government took its sweet time to attend to those who were left dying, cold, and starving in the aftermath of the super-typhoon.

We saw with our own disbelieving eyes how the state effectively abandoned our people to fend for themselves; how our officials utterly failed to mobilize the resources that we had empowered them to mobilize for these kinds of situations; how they refused to order privately-owned ships, buses, and other businesses to provide immediate relief to the desperate; how they would rather let people die of hunger than violate sacrosanct property rights.

Since then, the nightmare has refused to end: Over the past year, we saw how the government effectively prioritized the interests of large corporations, who have effectively been given free rein over the reconstruction process, over the needs of calamity victims. We saw how, instead of taking charge of providing direct services to our people, the government has instead chosen to turn relief and reconstruction into a profit-making or a tongpats-making opportunity, thereby allowing businesses and politicians to make money out of this terrible tragedy.

More horrifying than the super-typhoon itself has been the response of our own government to the super-typhoon; our people suffered not just from the disaster but from our disastrous government.

This criminal neglect, this apparent lack of compassion, could not just be attributed to some congenital ineptitude, to an innate cold-heartedness, or to some other personality trait of those who run our government. It reflects, rather, the class basis of our society: For under an inherently exploitative system such as ours — a system that forces people to prioritize profits over human welfare and needs, the bourgeois and other dominant classes who run our government could only see our people primarily as slaves who run the factories or who plow the fields, and who therefore keep the profits and the taxes coming — rather than as fellow human beings.

That we be better prepared, that we streamline the relief distribution processes and systems, that we increase the budget for disasters, and most, importantly, that we hold accountable and punish all those who were remiss in their duties, including President Aquino: all these would go a long way in lessening people’s suffering and building people’s resilience in the face of continuing disasters.

But only by overturning existing class relations, only by reorganizing our society so that we put people’s welfare over profits, only by establishing a government of, by, and for the people rather than a government of, by, and for elites — in short, only by fighting back and struggling against our ruling classes can we count on our government and on each other in the face of the most terrifying of storms.

This is not a pipe dream. The massive, spontaneous, and inspiring outpouring of solidarity that people from all walks of life extended to the victims of Haiyan and of our government after the typhoon proves one thing: that despite the inhumane conditions that many are forced to live in under capitalism, many of us are still capable of human compassion, and it is this compassion that fuels our resilience and drives our struggle for a better world. #