SILA ANG MAGBAYAD NG KANILANG MGA UTANG
Hindi namin malaman kung kami’y bubunghalit ng halakhak o haharap sa aming inudoro upang isambulat doon ang lahat naming kinain at ininom sa tuwing makikita namin sa telebisyon ang patalastas na nagtatanong sa atin kung masisikmura ba nating ipamana sa mga susunod na henerasyon ang utang ng bansa, na pagkatapos ay sinasabi sa ating dapat nating pasanin ang Expanded Value-Added Tax (EVAT) na sinimulang ipataw nitong Nobyembre 1.
Ang EVAT na ito –- kung saan idinagdag sa mga papatawan ng buwis ang langis, kuryente, at mismong serbisyong transportasyon –- ay isa sa walong revenue measure na ipinagtutulakan ng Malacañang upang diumano’y malutas ang krisis piskal na dumagan sa bansas sa kalagitnaan ng taong nagdaan. Ayon sa mga henyong economic manager ng Kagalang-galang na Pangulong Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, na nagduktorado ng ekonomiks sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (UP), ang EVAT ay makalilikom ng may P60 bilyon at malaki, samakatwid, ang magagawa upang punan ang piskal na depisito ng pamahalaan na umabot sa P80 bilyon noong 2004.
Tinatawagan tayo ng nabanggit na patalastas upang “magsakripisyo” alang-alang sa kapakanan ng bansa at ng mga susunod na henerasyon -- at kulang na lamang ay pagbabanggitin ang mga pangalan ng mga bayaning Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Macario Sakay, Wenceslao Vinzons, Claro M. Recto, Jose W. Diokno, Edgar Jopson, Liliosa Hilao, Lorena Barros, Eman Lacaba, Bobby de la Paz, Lean Alejandro at iba pa upang antigin ang ating makabayang damdami’t diwa.
Batay sa mga estadistika mula sa National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC), ang halaga ng pamumuhay sa buong bansa ay umabot na sa P667.20 bawat araw para sa pamilyang may anim na miyembro –- ang karaniwang pamilyang Pilipino. Samantala naman, ang pinakamataas na minimum na sahod magmula Hunyo ng taong ito ay P325 lamang, at ito’y sa National Capital Region (NCR).
Sa ganitong kalagayan, totoong malaking sakripisyo ang papasanin natin sa pagpapataw ng EVAT. Ngunit dapat nga bang tayo ang pumasan ng sakripisyong ito?
Sa pananaliksik ng ekonomistang si Dr. Alejandro Lichauco, lumilitaw na noong 1962 ay nasa $150 milyon ang utang panlabas ng Pilipinas. Ngayong taon, batay sa mga datos mula sa mismong gobyerno, ito’y nasa $69 bilyon na, o P3.8 trilyon. Kungh hahatiin ang P3.8 trilyon na ito sa kasalukuyang populasyong 84 milyon, lalabas na ang bawat Pilipino’y kasalukuyang nagkakautang ng P45,238.10 sa mga institusyong panlabas na ni anino’y hindi nakita ng karamihan sa atin.
Palaging ikinakatwiran ng pamahalaan na ang pangungutang na itong hindi matapus-tapos ay alang-alang sa pag-unlad ng bansa.
Ngunit gobyerno rin naman ang sa pana-panaho’y nag-uulat na taun-taon ay dumarami ang mga tumatanda nang di man lamang nakakikita ng kahit pisara, dumarami ang mga maysakit na namamatay nang di man lamang nakakikita ng duktor. Lubha pa namang mahalaga ang kalusugan at edukasyon sa pagpapaunlad ng yamang-tao.
Samantala’y kulang sa mahahalagang imprastruktura ang kalakhan ng bansa, at sa kakaunting bahagi nitong may mga gayon ay sira-sira naman ang maraming tulay at kalsada.
Nakikinabang ba kung gayon ang buong bayan sa mga utang panlabas? Maliwanag na hindi. Bakit ngayon tatawaging utang ng bansa ang mga ito, pareho ng ginagawa sa patalastas na ating pinag-uusapan?
Walang dapat na magbayad ng mga utang na ito kundi ang lahat ng naging opisyal ng pamahalaan na nasangkot sa pangungutang. Sa kaso ng mga yumao na, nararapat na habulin ang kanilang naiwang mga pag-aari. Sila ang magbayad ng mga utang na ito sapagkat sila lang naman ang nakinabang sa mga ito.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
NPA GREW BEYOND 'CRITICAL MASS' IN 2005
Dramatic increase in tactical offensives
A few weeks ago, Malacañang spokespersons were quoted in the news as saying that the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed component of the clandestine Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), remains “the biggest threat to national security.”
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) described the NPA as the country’s “No. 1 security threat” in mid-2004 – for the first time since the early 1990s.
This is a tune that is vastly different from what the government was singing as recently as the beginning of last year. Not too long ago the government was dismissing the NPA as a “spent force,” an “ideological orphan” engaged in extortion and other forms of banditry.
While the short time it took the government to make a turnaround on its earlier assessment of the NPA’s strength can cast doubt as to the accuracy of its statements, the NPA’s own figures appear to show that it became a stronger force for the government to reckon with in 2005.
Last year was a crucial year in the growth of the NPA forces, if we go by the Dec. 26, 2004 statement of CPP Central Committee chairman Armando Liwanag.
“The NPA now has the critical mass to intensify tactical offensives and increase its seizure of arms at an unprecedented rate,” Liwanag said in the statement. “It has raised its capability of arresting for investigation and, if the evidence warrants, for trial the most rabid puppets of U.S. imperialism, the most corrupt officials, the most cruel human rights violators, the worst exploiters and crime lords in prohibited drugs and other nefarious activities.”
“The attainment of critical mass means it has become extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the government to overcome the NPA militarily,” said CPP spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal in a recent interview with Bulatlat.
Surpassing “critical mass”
In 2005, Rosal told Bulatlat, the NPA grew beyond the “critical mass” it attained last year.
Rosal said the total number of NPA regular, or full-time, fighters has gone up this year to the equivalent of 27 battalions. Asked for a more exact figure, Rosal said the NPA is still in the process of consolidating its data for the present year. But considering that in the military a battalion has about 500 troops, this would mean that the NPA now has roughly about 13,500 regular fighters.
And these are just the regular fighters. This does not yet include the members of the so-called People’s Militia, the village-based NPA fighters who perform community police functions – whom, as Rosal pointed out, the military describes as “peasants by day, NPA fighters by night.”
With the growth in the number of NPA forces has come an increase in the number of tactical offensives compared to last year, Rosal said.
Citing data obtained from reports by various guerrilla fronts, Rosal said the NPA was able to wage a total of 116 tactical offensives from Sept. 13 to Nov. 23 this year. Of these, there were five ambushes, six raids, four sparrow operations (quick attacks in population centers), eight sniping operations, and 14 executions of “criminals and human rights violators.”
From these, he said, the NPA was able to seize 54 high-powered firearms, as opposed to one loss. There were 128 government troops killed in action and 73 wounded during these offensives, as opposed to five killed and two wounded on the NPA side.
And that was just from Sept. 13 to Nov. 23. Rosal in particular cited the Southern Tagalog region, where a total of 62 government troops were killed in NPA offensives since March.
“This campaign is continuously being pursued,” Rosal said, “and is going to be pursued until the end of this year.”
The tactical offensives for this year were particularly numerous in Mindanao and the Bicol region, said Rosal – owing, he said, to the relative strength of the NPA in those areas compared to that in other parts of the country.
The rebel leader said the NPA wages an average of two tactical offensives every week in 2004. This is roughly equivalent to 104 tactical offensives for the said year.
Rosal said the NPA still has to consolidate its figures on the exact number of tactical offensives from the start of 2005 to the time of the interview with Bulatlat. However, he said, with the tactical offensives waged in various parts of the country from Sept. 13 to Nov. 23 alone, the number of NPA operations for this year has definitely exceeded that of last year.
The CPP called for an increase in tactical offensives in the latter part of mid-2005, Rosal told Bulatlat, as a contribution of the armed revolutionary movement to the struggle for the ouster of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime – which is under fire for the imposition of what have been described as “anti-national and anti-people” policies, corruption, electoral fraud, and human rights violations. The intensification of tactical offensives, Rosal explained, serves to weaken the AFP’s capacity and resolve to defend the regime.
With all these, Rosal said, has come an improvement in the NPA’s capacity to wage agrarian revolution, which the underground revolutionary movement considers a main component of the armed struggle. He said there were several successful campaigns this year for the lowering of debt interest rates and the increase in peasants’ harvest shares as well as the wages of farm workers and the farm gate prices of crops.
Increasingly formidable
The NPA, Rosal said, plans in the next few years to increase the number of guerrilla fronts it maintains from the present 130 to 140, and attain a more advanced stage of the present strategic defensive phase of the armed struggle and thus bring it closer to the strategic stalemate where the armed revolutionary forces would have acquired capacity for engaging in more massive confrontations with “enemy” troops.
There is a high probability that the NPA would achieve these goals should it be able to at least maintain the momentum it attained this year. The NPA upped the ante this year and it appears there is no stopping it from going further.
It is clear that the NPA has gone beyond the point where the government began to stop dismissing it as a “spent force.” From all indications, it is capable of going even further.
Dramatic increase in tactical offensives
A few weeks ago, Malacañang spokespersons were quoted in the news as saying that the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed component of the clandestine Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), remains “the biggest threat to national security.”
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) described the NPA as the country’s “No. 1 security threat” in mid-2004 – for the first time since the early 1990s.
This is a tune that is vastly different from what the government was singing as recently as the beginning of last year. Not too long ago the government was dismissing the NPA as a “spent force,” an “ideological orphan” engaged in extortion and other forms of banditry.
While the short time it took the government to make a turnaround on its earlier assessment of the NPA’s strength can cast doubt as to the accuracy of its statements, the NPA’s own figures appear to show that it became a stronger force for the government to reckon with in 2005.
Last year was a crucial year in the growth of the NPA forces, if we go by the Dec. 26, 2004 statement of CPP Central Committee chairman Armando Liwanag.
“The NPA now has the critical mass to intensify tactical offensives and increase its seizure of arms at an unprecedented rate,” Liwanag said in the statement. “It has raised its capability of arresting for investigation and, if the evidence warrants, for trial the most rabid puppets of U.S. imperialism, the most corrupt officials, the most cruel human rights violators, the worst exploiters and crime lords in prohibited drugs and other nefarious activities.”
“The attainment of critical mass means it has become extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the government to overcome the NPA militarily,” said CPP spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal in a recent interview with Bulatlat.
Surpassing “critical mass”
In 2005, Rosal told Bulatlat, the NPA grew beyond the “critical mass” it attained last year.
Rosal said the total number of NPA regular, or full-time, fighters has gone up this year to the equivalent of 27 battalions. Asked for a more exact figure, Rosal said the NPA is still in the process of consolidating its data for the present year. But considering that in the military a battalion has about 500 troops, this would mean that the NPA now has roughly about 13,500 regular fighters.
And these are just the regular fighters. This does not yet include the members of the so-called People’s Militia, the village-based NPA fighters who perform community police functions – whom, as Rosal pointed out, the military describes as “peasants by day, NPA fighters by night.”
With the growth in the number of NPA forces has come an increase in the number of tactical offensives compared to last year, Rosal said.
Citing data obtained from reports by various guerrilla fronts, Rosal said the NPA was able to wage a total of 116 tactical offensives from Sept. 13 to Nov. 23 this year. Of these, there were five ambushes, six raids, four sparrow operations (quick attacks in population centers), eight sniping operations, and 14 executions of “criminals and human rights violators.”
From these, he said, the NPA was able to seize 54 high-powered firearms, as opposed to one loss. There were 128 government troops killed in action and 73 wounded during these offensives, as opposed to five killed and two wounded on the NPA side.
And that was just from Sept. 13 to Nov. 23. Rosal in particular cited the Southern Tagalog region, where a total of 62 government troops were killed in NPA offensives since March.
“This campaign is continuously being pursued,” Rosal said, “and is going to be pursued until the end of this year.”
The tactical offensives for this year were particularly numerous in Mindanao and the Bicol region, said Rosal – owing, he said, to the relative strength of the NPA in those areas compared to that in other parts of the country.
The rebel leader said the NPA wages an average of two tactical offensives every week in 2004. This is roughly equivalent to 104 tactical offensives for the said year.
Rosal said the NPA still has to consolidate its figures on the exact number of tactical offensives from the start of 2005 to the time of the interview with Bulatlat. However, he said, with the tactical offensives waged in various parts of the country from Sept. 13 to Nov. 23 alone, the number of NPA operations for this year has definitely exceeded that of last year.
The CPP called for an increase in tactical offensives in the latter part of mid-2005, Rosal told Bulatlat, as a contribution of the armed revolutionary movement to the struggle for the ouster of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime – which is under fire for the imposition of what have been described as “anti-national and anti-people” policies, corruption, electoral fraud, and human rights violations. The intensification of tactical offensives, Rosal explained, serves to weaken the AFP’s capacity and resolve to defend the regime.
With all these, Rosal said, has come an improvement in the NPA’s capacity to wage agrarian revolution, which the underground revolutionary movement considers a main component of the armed struggle. He said there were several successful campaigns this year for the lowering of debt interest rates and the increase in peasants’ harvest shares as well as the wages of farm workers and the farm gate prices of crops.
Increasingly formidable
The NPA, Rosal said, plans in the next few years to increase the number of guerrilla fronts it maintains from the present 130 to 140, and attain a more advanced stage of the present strategic defensive phase of the armed struggle and thus bring it closer to the strategic stalemate where the armed revolutionary forces would have acquired capacity for engaging in more massive confrontations with “enemy” troops.
There is a high probability that the NPA would achieve these goals should it be able to at least maintain the momentum it attained this year. The NPA upped the ante this year and it appears there is no stopping it from going further.
It is clear that the NPA has gone beyond the point where the government began to stop dismissing it as a “spent force.” From all indications, it is capable of going even further.
HINDI KA IBINABASURA NG AMING ALAALA
Itinapon ka ng kanilang gunita,
ngunit hindi ng aming gunita.
Paano ka ibabasura ng aming alaala?
Sa isang kamay mo'y naghuhumiyaw
ang katibayan ng iyong kabayanihan
noong Ikalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig,
habang sa kabilang kamay ay nakaluklok
ang isang latang tagasambot ng mga baryang inihuhulog
ng mga mahabaging kamay.
Pagpapalimos ng habag ang huli mong hantungan.
Ikaw, na nakipagbuno kay Kamatayan
upang huwag maging kahabag-habag ang bansa,
ay nauwi sa pagpapalimos ng habag.
Sapagkat itinapon ka ng kanilang gunita.
Itinapon ka ng mga gunita
nilang iilang hari-harian ng ating lupain,
sapagkat ang ginugunita nila
ay ang Kalbong Agilang lumipad palayo
nang maghasik ng nakatutunaw na init
ang Sumisikat na Araw ng Silangang Asya
at bumalik na lamang upang tayo'y sagipin
matapos na mabitay ang mga Tojo't Yamashita.
Itong Kalbong Agilang makalawang dumagit sa ating bayan
matapos nating makalag ang gapos ng ibang dayo --
ito ang pinili nilang gunitain.
Kaya't itinapon ka ng kanilang gunita.
Ngunit hindi ka ibinabasura ng aming alaala --
hinding-hindi, at ang aming pag-alaala sa iyo
ay isang hakbang din tungo sa aming pagsasadlak sa kanila
sa nararapat nilang kauwian --
ang basurahan ng kasaysayan.
Itinapon ka ng kanilang gunita,
ngunit hindi ng aming gunita.
Paano ka ibabasura ng aming alaala?
Sa isang kamay mo'y naghuhumiyaw
ang katibayan ng iyong kabayanihan
noong Ikalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig,
habang sa kabilang kamay ay nakaluklok
ang isang latang tagasambot ng mga baryang inihuhulog
ng mga mahabaging kamay.
Pagpapalimos ng habag ang huli mong hantungan.
Ikaw, na nakipagbuno kay Kamatayan
upang huwag maging kahabag-habag ang bansa,
ay nauwi sa pagpapalimos ng habag.
Sapagkat itinapon ka ng kanilang gunita.
Itinapon ka ng mga gunita
nilang iilang hari-harian ng ating lupain,
sapagkat ang ginugunita nila
ay ang Kalbong Agilang lumipad palayo
nang maghasik ng nakatutunaw na init
ang Sumisikat na Araw ng Silangang Asya
at bumalik na lamang upang tayo'y sagipin
matapos na mabitay ang mga Tojo't Yamashita.
Itong Kalbong Agilang makalawang dumagit sa ating bayan
matapos nating makalag ang gapos ng ibang dayo --
ito ang pinili nilang gunitain.
Kaya't itinapon ka ng kanilang gunita.
Ngunit hindi ka ibinabasura ng aming alaala --
hinding-hindi, at ang aming pag-alaala sa iyo
ay isang hakbang din tungo sa aming pagsasadlak sa kanila
sa nararapat nilang kauwian --
ang basurahan ng kasaysayan.
Friday, December 16, 2005
KUNG TAYO'Y IISA
Silang iilang mang-aagaw ng ating hininga:
alam nila ang hiwagang mangyayari
kapag ang marami'y naging iisa.
Kaya't ibig nilang tayo'y maging iisang paris
ng nakatiklop na mga tuhod,
maging iisang paris ng nakalaylay na mga bisig
habang nilalatigo ang ating mga likod
at ibinabangga sa dingding ang ating mga ulo.
Sa ganito'y mabuti pang hindi lahat tayo
ay mga nakatiklop na tuhod
at mga nakalaylay na bisig,
at may ilang nakaunat na binti't hita
at bisig na bumibigwas sa kanila.
Higit na mabuti
kung tayo'y maging iisang gubat
ng nakaunat na mga binti't hita,
maging iisang alon ng mga bisig
na hahampas sa kanila
at magbubuwal sa kanila --
at maglilibing sa kanila.
Silang iilang mang-aagaw ng ating hininga:
alam nila ang hiwagang mangyayari
kapag ang marami'y naging iisa.
Kaya't ibig nilang tayo'y maging iisang paris
ng nakatiklop na mga tuhod,
maging iisang paris ng nakalaylay na mga bisig
habang nilalatigo ang ating mga likod
at ibinabangga sa dingding ang ating mga ulo.
Sa ganito'y mabuti pang hindi lahat tayo
ay mga nakatiklop na tuhod
at mga nakalaylay na bisig,
at may ilang nakaunat na binti't hita
at bisig na bumibigwas sa kanila.
Higit na mabuti
kung tayo'y maging iisang gubat
ng nakaunat na mga binti't hita,
maging iisang alon ng mga bisig
na hahampas sa kanila
at magbubuwal sa kanila --
at maglilibing sa kanila.
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