Communist Party of the Philippines - **Arroyo and Aquino economics are one and the same**

Aquino, like his teacher Arroyo, upholds the basic economic policies
instigated by US imperialism and pushed by the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank. Both are disciples of neoliberal economic
policies and defenders of the semicolonial and semifeudal system.

PRESS STATEMENT

Communist Party of the Philippines

14 January 2012

**Arroyo and Aquino economics are one and the same**

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s “It’s the economy, student” is a
shameless paper of self-promotion built on lies and half-truths -- the
very same foundation on which, for nine long years, she built her
corrupt and brutal regime from 2001 to 2010. It presents itself as a
professor’s critique of her student’s economic policies, but is
actually nothing more than a shallow political diatribe.

Arroyo tries to differentiate herself from Aquino in form, portraying
herself as the “hardworking professor” and Aquino as “the easy
go lucky student”. However, she failed to point out any crucial
difference in terms of content, because in reality, there is none.

Aquino, like his teacher Arroyo, upholds the basic economic policies
instigated by US imperialism and pushed by the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank. Arroyo is no original. And neither is her student
Aquino. They both are disciples of neoliberal economic policies and
defenders of the Philippine semicolonial and semifeudal system. They
both are advocates of trade and investment liberalization,
deregulation, denationalization and privatization, which have resulted
in economic stagnation and the people’s deteriorating socio-economic
conditions.

In terms of economic policy, Arroyo and Aquino, the teacher and the
student, are so much the same. Let us count the ways:

 Arroyo and Aquino are defenders of the Expanded Value Added Tax.
Arroyo considered it her ‘centerpiece’ fiscal measure. In full
agreement with his teacher, Aquino refuses to remove the EVAT imposed
on oil prices and has imposed it on toll fees. In the face of the
continued slowdown in domestic production and economic activity, for
both Arroyo and Aquino, the EVAT, which taxes the ordinary people is
the easiest way to generate government revenue.

 Neither Aquino nor Arroyo conforms to the idea of increasing
workers’ wages substantially to allow them to cope with rising costs
of living. During the nine-year Arroyo regime, daily minimum wages in
the national capital region were on the average increased by a mere
P17 (Philippine Pesos). Last year, under Aquino, daily minimum wages
were increased by only P22. Both Aquino and Arroyo oppose the clamor
to raise daily minimum wages by P125.

 As senator, Gloria Arroyo was one of the proponents of the Oil
Deregulation Law when it was deliberated on and eventually enacted in
1998. For nine years under her term as president, she allowed foreign
oil monopoly companies to jack up oil prices with impunity, reaching
unprecendented levels at around 2008. Her student Aquino is in
complete agreement. Despite growing clamor, he has refused to even
hear petitions to repeal the oil deregulation law. He has also refused
to heed the demand for the removal of the 12% EVAT imposed on
petroleum products.

 Arroyo was the principal proponent of the Mining Act of 1995. Like
his teacher, Aquino has campaigned to attract foreign mining
companies, conforming to the misguided notion that mining will bring
development and employment. Neither Arroyo nor Aquino considers the
fact that mining contributes a mere 0.6% to total employment in the
Philippines. This minuscule input comes at an enormous cost to the
Filipino people who suffer the irreversible loss of their natural
resources.

 Arroyo was also the principal proponent of the Electric Power
Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) which deregulated the power industry.
Despite the glaring fact that the EPIRA has failed to bring down
electricity rates as it promised, Aquino does not intend to have the
law reviewed or repealed, knowing full well that he counts among his
campaign supporters the Lopezes who hold vast interests in the power
industry.

 Aquino, like his teacher Arroyo, does not have a program for national
industrialization to spur domestic economic production and generate
employment. Lacking such, the only recourse of the Arroyo regime was
to offer foreign big capitalists cheap Filipino call center agents for
business process outsourcing and intensify the deployment of overseas
contract workers. Aquino’s employment thrust is no different. He
will, however, have to contend with the contraction of international
labor markets and the current drive in the US to reverse outsourcing
and bring the jobs back to the US. In any case, both Aquino and
Arroyo’s economic policy fail to provide a strategic blueprint to
resolve the chronic and acute problem of unemployment that beset the
Philippines.

 Arroyo, like Aquino, is opposed to genuine land reform. In November
2004, when the Aquino and Arroyo families were still friends, Arroyo
ordered the deployment of the military to suppress the Hacienda
Luisita strike which resulted in the massacre of seven farm workers.
Similarly, peasant leaders in the Arroyo lands in Negros were
suppressed as they clamored for the free distribution of land.

 Both Arroyo and Aquino are masters of statistical manipulation in
covering up the grave socio-economic problems of the poeple. In 2005,
Arroyo was able to reduce the number of unemployed without actually
creating jobs simply by redefining employment and who constitutes the
labor force. In similar fashion, Aquino was able to bring down last
year the number of people living below the food threshold by reducing
the daily food basket (removing milk, for instance, from the morning
meals of children).

 Following his teacher’s footsteps, Aquino has continued and
expanded the Conditional Cash Transfer Program funded by World Bank
loans. Both Arroyo and Aquino speak of the CCT as an
“anti-poverty” undertaking, in an attempt to make the people
believe that their conditions will improve through small cash
infusions even as the conditions for exploitation, oppression and
poverty persist.

 Aquino, as did Arroyo, pushes for the privatization or increasing
role of private business in providing education, health and other
services. Aquino, like Arroyo, has cut back on social spending, making
education, health and other services increasingly inaccessible to the
people.

 Like his predecessor Arroyo, Aquino gives little damn about the
social wellbeing of the people. Neither regime addressed the demand of
the urban poor dwellers for on-site development or in-city relocation,
stubbornly insisting on dumping them in areas far from their places of
employment and with little opportunity to make a living.

 Even as both Aquino and Arroyo are prone to profligate
spending—Arroyo has Le Cirqué while Aquino has his Porsché, the
student learned from his teacher that as president, it is better to
keep one’s hand clean, and just let your men do the dirty work. The
appearance of clean governance allows bureaucrat capitalism to thrive
under Aquino as during the Arroyo regime. State privilege and power
continue to be employed for the benefit of big business interests,
specifically of those who are supportive of or affiliated with the
ruling clique.

Finding a fundamental difference between Arroyo and her economics
student Aquino is an exercise in futility. Arroyo’s policies then,
are Aquino’s policies now. For that matter, their policies are
essentially the same as those of previous regimes since the inception
of the neocolonial state in 1946.

These are policies that oppose land reform and prevent national
industrialization, progress and economic modernization. These are
policies that perpetuate the semicolonial and semifeudal system and
subject the people to perpetual exploitation, oppression and poverty.

Precisely because of the continuation of economic policies of the
past, the Aquino regime is increasingly becoming isolated from the
Filipino people. The Filipino people are increasingly disgusted over
the deteriorating conditions under the Aquino regime and are bound to
rise up in their millions against the neoliberal policies of US
imperialism and its puppet regime