The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) lambasted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for her tax measures saying that these are real nightmares for consumers. According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of the group “Because of these new tax measures our lives have been harder to bear, the price of oil has increased 7 times since January this year, and another one is in the offing. The simple begging of Gloria to the Big 3 with do nothing to stop this impending increase. Also by planning to increase the excise tax by P2 per liter and to increase to 5-7% the tariffs on oil imports, there would be a free for all on the rise of oil prices,”

“Even just the talks of these oil increases cause a domino effect on the prices of basic commodities, now the cheapest kind of rice that you can buy excluding the NFA rice is P20, sardines which was formerly P10 now is P11 and so forth. We are now not just biting the bullet, we are already eating it,” complained the peasant leader.

In a span of two weeks, a deluge of tax measures have been tried by Malacanang to be passed to the detriment of the consumers and all of them have been met by resistance. 

As for his part Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of KMP, said “what Gloria is doing is very dangerous because she is pushing the people to revolt. She is courting a consumers’ revolt and if she continues to push for these oppressive tax measures then she may be ousted from power,”

“Yes, taxes has to be paid but the ones who should shoulder them are the ones who are well off particularly big business-men like Danding Cojuangco and Lucio Tan and not the already suffering Filipino masses. If the greed and folly of the few are to be passed on to the majority to bear then Gloria is in for a shock, the Filipino are a patient lot but when the burden becomes unbearable, they will be the ones to rise up and not the prices,” ended Ala. # # #
 

KMP - 14 August 2004