The left-leaning Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) lambasted Malacanang for misleading the public on the real state of our economy. Based on the latest Social Weather Station survey 11.5 percent of the respondents said their family experienced hunger at least once during the last three months. It also stated that 9.1 percent experienced moderate hunger while 2.2 percent said they experienced severe hunger.

According to Ka Willy Marbella, spokesperson of KMP, “Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should stop fooling the populace and should state the real score. She should call, a spade, a spade and poverty, poverty. Maybe she is afraid that the people will find out that she is the primary reason of their plight,”

“Besides government data itself shows that the real income per family has fallen despite the almost continuous increase in the GNP. This is all too clear to the people, our lives have definitely become harder under the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, causing her popularity to plunge and it will cause its continuous downfall, until she herself falls,” added the peasant leader.

As for his part Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of the group “the Gross National Product (GNP) has never been accurate nor even close to indicating the real state of our economy, it can easily be manipulated and is fraught with anomalies in its computation itself. For example it considers as fully employed even takatak boys who work only on evenings, while it does not add into the computation the unpaid labor of housewives and their contribution to the economy. It also does not state that most of the wealth of the nation goes to the upper 1 percent while most of the populace are suffering.”

“A most recent ploy by the regime to misrepresent the number employed for example is the hiring of the street sweepers for a month up to 3 then fire them afterwards, to fool the statistics on job creation as well as on employment. Also the influx of OFW remittances is the only saving grace of the GNP computation because it artificially projects a growth in the economy, but if you review the basic national sectors that should be the basis of growth the movement is often minimal or doctored. Basically the GNP is the rose colored glasses the administration wears and wants the populace to use to say that everything is ok,” ended Ala. # # #

KMP - 15 January 2005