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Dutertenomics at Cha-cha: Pagsagasa sa Demokrasya Yearend 2017

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Download Usapang IBON Yearend 2017 primer here

Umiigting ang ligalig sa administrasyong Duterte, wala pang dalawang taon sa panunungkulan. Lumalala ang kalagayan ng mamamayan, habang ipinatutupad pa rin ng gubyerno ang mga kontra-mamamayang patakarang neoliberal.

Tuluyan nang napako ang mga popular na pangako ni Duterte, pero patuloy pa rin ang kanyang pagpapanggap na siya ay para sa mahirap. Ipinagpapatuloy ng kanyang rehimen ang mga polisiyang neoliberal ng mga nagdaang administrasyon — ito ang Dutertenomics. Sa katunayan, nasa yugto na ng pagkompleto ng halos apat na dekada ng neoliberalismo si Duterte, at magbubunsod ito ng mas matinding pasakit sa mamamayan.

Isang mayor na indikasyon sa panahong ito ang pagpasa ng anti-mahirap, maka-mayaman at maka-negosyong pagbubuwis, ang Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN). Tutustusan nito ang grandyosong programa sa imprastruktura ni Duterte, ang “Build Build Build” na magbubukas ng malawak na oportunidad sa mga oligarkiya sa ekonomiya, negosyo, at maging sa mga opisyal ng gobyerno.

Hindi na maitatwa ang layunin ng gobyernong Duterte na isentralisa ang kapangyarihan at mangunyapit sa poder. Mabilisang maniobra ni Duterte at ng kanyang mga kasapakat sa Kongreso na baguhin ang Konstitusyon (Cha-cha), todong buksan ang ekonomiya sa dayuhan, at iwasiwas ang pederalismo na diumano ay solusyon sa lahat ng kaguluhan na kasalukuyang dinaranas ng sambayanan.

Hindi nagdadalawang-isip ang rehimen na tahakin ang diktadurya at anumang bahid ng tiranya. Mula sa kanyang marahas na kampanya kontra-droga, paglabag sa karapatang-tao, hanggang sa panggigipit ng kanyang mga kalaban sa politika, pagpapalawig ng martial law sa Mindanao ng isa pang taon, at paggamit sa mga trolls sa social media para patahimikin ang mga kumukontra sa pamahalaan, hubad na si Duterte ng anumang plumahe na siya ay para sa nakaarami, Ang totoo, nanganganib ang demokrasya sa ilalim ng rehimen.

Duterte: If PH goes down, human rights can’t help us

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte warned anew that the government will go after organizations believed to be supporting the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Duterte made the statement as he reiterated that there will be no more talks between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.

“Itong NPA (New People’s Army), totodasin ko talaga sila. Tatapusin ko. The talks are over. No more talks. And I will go after the legal fronts,” Duterte said shortly after he delivered his arrival speech from his official visit to India at the Francisco Bangoy International Airport here late Friday night. The President’s press conference lasted for more than an hour.

Duterte said he is aware of the communist’s legal front as he once “handled” the National Alliance for Justice, Freedom and Democracy.

“‘Yun ‘yung Karapatan ngayon,” he added, referring to human rights group Karapatan.

He said if the military and the police has to kill they have to do so.

“And if you have to kill, do it because the human rights, kung babagsak itong bayan na ‘to, walang maitulong sa atin ‘yan,” Duterte said.

Duterte said he is only waiting for the decision of the Supreme Court for the declaration of the NPA as a “terrorist” organization following his signing of a proclamation in December last year labeling the CPP, and its armed wing, the NPA as “terrorists”.

Duterte said the terrorist tagging is because of the “continued violent acts” of the revolutionary movement including its “collection of taxes.”

Meanwhile, Cristina Palabay, national secretary general of Karapatan said, the extension of martial law in Mindanao, the continuing implementation of counter-insurgency program Oplan Kapayapaan, the crackdown on progressive and human rights organizations advocating for people’s rights, and attacks against press freedom show that the Duterte government is “keen on intensifying extrajudicial killings, illegal arrests, threats and harassment against human rights defenders (HRDs).”

Palabay said they have recorded 84 human rights defenders killed under the Duterte administration, out of the 697 HRDs killed since 2001.

“Tyrants do not like unyielding, resolute people who challenge the status quo and work purposely to demand justice – an attribute characteristic of HRDs,” she said.

Palabay said on January 22, Aniceto Lopez Jr., 55, the secretary-general of Kahugpungan sa mga Mag-uuma (KASAMA) – Bukidnon, was shot dead in Purok 3, Paitan, Quezon, Bukidnon.

She said the suspect was identified as Ernesto Balopenios, a member of the Philippine Marines. The victim sustained multiple gunshot wounds.

“Prior to his killing, the victim reportedly received a call from an unknown person who introduced himself as a member of the Bukidnon police,” Palabay added. She said the caller ordered Lopez to surrender before January 27, as he was accused of being an NPA supporter.

Two days earlier, activist James Flores, 33, a member of the Pederasyon sa tanang Asosasyon sa mga Mag-uuma sa Agusan ug Davao (PAMULAD), was also gunned down by an unidentified assailant while leaving a grocery store in Tagum City.

Karapatan said instead of tinkering with the 1987 Constitution, Filipino lawmakers should focus on passing laws that promote and protect human rights brazenly under attack in the current administration. (davaotoday.com)

CALIBRATION

CALIBRATION. A personnel from the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board ​R​​egion 11 repairs a broken taxi meter before it is calibrated with the new taxi fare rate, Friday, January 26, at the old airport in Sasa, Davao City. LTFRB is eyeing to recalibrate around 5,500 taxis in the city by February 2018. (Robby Joy D. Salveron / davaotoday.com)

‘SAVE OUR JEEPNEYS’

‘SAVE OUR JEEPNEYS’. T​he t​ransport group Transmission Piston holds a protest ​on ​Wednesday, January 24,​ in front of the Land Transportation Office-11 (LTO) to oppose the public utility vehicle (PUV) modernization program and Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law​. (Robby Joy D. Salveron / davaotoday.com)

Guns Against Needles: Escalating attacks on community health workers in the Philippines

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This month, IBON Foundation launches thru a mini-forum the book “Guns Against Needles: Escalating attacks against community health workers in the Philippines”. The event will be on 26 January 2018, 2pm at the IBON Conference Hall, 4th Floor located at the IBON building, #114 Timog Ave. QC.
The forum/ launch intends to bring together health and human rights advocates to not only hear about the new book which narrates various experiences of health and development workers  in terms of persecution by State forces while they are in the line of duty in providing health care and development services to the populace. We also hope to create a venue for questions and exchanges with regard to health and human rights in the Philippines.

Health workers fight vaccine scare amid measles outbreak

Councilor Joselle Villafuerte says a data from the Department of Health in Davao Region showed that there have been 224 suspected cases, 16 of which were confirmed during the City Council session on Tuesday, January 23. (Robby Joy D. Salveron / davaotoday.com)

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Health officials here urged parents to submit their children to the government’s measles immunization program following an outbreak of the said viral disease.

Josephine Villafuerte, the city’s chief health officer, led this appeal on Tuesday, January 23. She noted that there are parents who refuse or fear to have their kids vaccinated against measles due to the health scare brought by the controversial Dengvaxia vaccine.

“There are those who refuse to be vaccinated because they are afraid. They are afraid because of the previous events… listening to the Senate, listening to the media,” Villafuerte, a physician, said in a radio interview.

Villafuerte admitted there was a challenge of urging the parents to participate in the government’s fight against measles.

These parents, she said, have lost their trust on vaccination programs because of the prevailing fear that these might out to be another Dengvaxia controversy.

“The vaccines we are using are really accurate. It’s been approved by DOH (Department of Health), by WHO (World Health Organization) and we’ve been giving them to children for a long long time already. They should not be afraid,” Villafuerte said.

The Davao City Health Office here declared on January 22, a measles outbreak after more than 200 suspected measles cases were reported from November 2017 until January of this year.

She explained that an “outbreak” was declared “because a lot of cases of measles were recorded and it has to be contained by the outbreak response immunization” and prevent further spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, Councilor Joselle Villafuerte said a data from the Department of Health in Davao Region showed that there have been 224 suspected cases, 16 of which were confirmed from November 2017 to January this year.

She explained that these “suspected cases” were not confirmed through tests but showed measles-like symptoms such as high fever, bloodshot eyes, runny nose, and rashes.

4 deaths due to measles

The councilor also cited that four deaths – children aged six months old to two years old – were also recorded due to complications.

Barangay 23-C recorded the highest number of measles cases with 60, followed by Buhangin Proper with 16 and Barangay Bucana with 13.

Councilor Villafuerte cited that based on DOH’s record, 80% of children in the city were not vaccinated.

She also pointed out possible factors of the sudden rise of measles cases including malnutrition and weak immunity among children, and a large number of transient residents from other areas (including evacuees from Marawi City) who might not have been vaccinated. (davaotoday.com)

Under Duterte: Biggest contraction in employment in 20 years –IBON

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PH growth job-destroying in 2017

Going on its second year, the Duterte administration saw the largest contraction in employment in 20 years, research group IBON said in its yearend analysis of economic and political trends. This shows that generaly rising Philippine economic growth remained unfelt by Filipinos and in fact saw a worse jobs crisis, said the group. That government prioritizes pro-big business strategies will only aggravate economic underdevelopment and backwardness, and narrow decent job opportunities for Filipinos in the long run, said the group.

Data from the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) shows that the number of employed Filipinos fell by 663,000 to 40.3 million in 2017 from the year before. This is the largest contraction in employment in 20 years or since the 821,000 lost in 1997, said IBON. According to IBON employment re-estimates based on government data*, the number of unemployed rose by 66,000 to 4.1 million. The unemployment rate has also risen to some 9.2% and remains by far the highest in ASEAN, the group noted.

This, even if the Philippines was hailed by the World Bank as the “fastest growing economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)”. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) lauded the country’s growth momentum, while Fitch Ratings upgraded the Philippines’ credit rating from “BBB-“ to “BBB” with a stable outlook at yearend 2017. Growth in Philippine gross domestic product (GDP) was at 6.7% in the first nine months of 2017, slower than the 7.1% recorded growth in the same period the year before, but still relatively high even for the last high-growth 7-year period.

IBON further noted that labor force participation rate (LFPR) dropped to 63.7%, the lowest in over three decades since the 63.1% rate during the severe economic crisis in 1985. According to IBON, the vast reserve army of unemployed gives employers huge leverage to peg wages at a low, combining with government’s cheap wage policy to keep wages down and contractualization unabated.

The lack of job opportunities, said IBON, continues to drive millions of Filipinos abroad for work. Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) reports 1,281,506 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) deployed from January to September 2017, or equivalent to an average of 4,694 per day in the first three quarters of 2017. Millions of Filipinos also continue to be driven into informal, low-paying and insecure work.

According to IBON, the economy’s over-reliance on shallow cheap labor sources of income as its main drivers – overseas Filipinos and workers in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms and foreign-dominated export enclave manufacturing – does not contribute in a meaningful way to building local technological or production capacity. The latter  would be the more stable source of decent job generation that can also contribute to national development, IBON said.

*IBON estimates seek to make official government figures more comparable with historical data.

Independent foreign policy? Foreign interests behind TRAIN, Cha-cha, says IBON

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While President Duterte likes to claim that his administration adheres to an independent foreign policy, it appears that his major programs such as the packages of tax reforms and the planned Charter change (Cha-cha) are actually pushed by US and other foreign interests.

IBON noted that the tax reforms and Cha-cha are among the key policy reforms long lobbied for by US business groups with active support from American aid agencies. It cited the US’s Partnership for Growth (PFG) initiative, an aid program participated in and coordinated by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), State Department, Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) and other US agencies as well as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and various UN bodies.

Part of the PFG implementation is The Arangkada Philippines Project (TAPP) of the USAID and the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) through the Joint Foreign Chamber of Commerce (JFCC). Under the TAPP, the JFCC has produced Legislation Policy Briefs that identified broad recommendations for Congress and the Executive.

Among hundreds of specific policy proposals of the JFCC are comprehensive tax reforms that will raise excise tax on petroleum products, impose sin taxes (alcohol, cigarettes, and tobacco products), as well as broaden the base of the value-added tax (VAT), while reducing the corporate income tax. It also pushed for the lifting of constitutional restrictions on foreign investments through Charter change (Cha-cha).

IBON noted that the US remains a major player in the Philippine economy. In the past decade (2006 to 2016), American businesses have invested US$4.12 billion or 10.3% of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) that flowed into the domestic economy, the second biggest among all foreign investors. The US is also the second largest market for products from the Philippines, accounting for US$89.22 billion or 15.6% of the country’s total exports in the past 10 years.

Both the pro-business tax reforms of the Duterte administration and Cha-cha for greater economic liberalization will further benefit US corporations. This includes lower corporate income tax that will be offset by heavier indirect taxes at the expense of the public, and the opening up of additional sectors of the economy for US investments and profits, said IBON.