The turn of events was not simply a case of incompetence. It was a case of a deliberate neglect.
A string of fare hikes marks the beginning of the year. Just recently, jeepney fare increased by P1, while the taxi flagdown rate climbed by P10. Toll fees are set to increase in several tranches, 300% for SLEX and 11% increase for NLEX. The LRT and MRT were no different from other modes of public transportation – the government is planning to implement an increase despite the strong opposition of students, professionals and other commuters.
While the foreign investors describe the fare hikes as “necessary,” the increase only proves how private companies profit from what is supposed to be a public service. In the public consultation, the administration itself admitted that the government does not receive a massive portion of the revenues from the LRT/MRT. It does not even profit from the long stretch of advertisements.
Clearly, the government, for the longest time, has given private companies the upper hand in managing the means of public transportation. For the longest time, it has allowed them to turn a public service to a business that is vulnerable to the guiles and instabilities of the market.
This could not be more manifest in any case other than that of the land transportation fare hikes. In the global market, oil companies often justify hikes as an inevitable repercussion of scarcity due to circumstances such as war or civil unrest in the Middle East. There was actually no scarcity – just insatiable capitalist greed. In fact, local oil firms’ petroleum products were overpriced by at least P7per liter by the end of 2010.
The situation was exacerbated by the continuing implementation of the Oil Deregulation Law, the premise of which is to pull pump prices down by ensuring competition. The results, if anything, speak of the failure of the law. The so-called “Big 3,” or the three largest oil companies, have long been setting prices and creating an artificial scarcity, thus cementing the monopoly of profit within themselves.
True enough, the fare hikes reveal that privatization, deregulation and liberalization – the dogma of the free market – only heightened the already massive inequities in the society. While companies continue to reap profit, the majority also continue to bear the burden of increased prices when social services should not even come with a hefty price.
And yet, President Benigno Aquino III proposed private public partnerships, which is basically patterned after the same dogma, as the solution to the deteriorating state of basic social services. As if history did not teach him a lesson. As if he did not promise to reverse his predecessor’s anti-people policies that pushed the impoverished against the wall – left with no choice but to tighten the belt when they could not even breathe.
Time and again, we expressed our opposition against such policies. We pointed out that PPPs will only serve the whims of the foreign corporations. But he did not listen. Such is the character of this administration: stubborn refusal to listen to its people.
Of course, the only recourse to such stubbornness is an equally unyielding form of action. Given the sudden spate of fare hikes and the myopic measures of the Aquino administration, the most effective response is one that is fierce and militant.
The strike of the students should not be the end – it should be the beginning. The strike against the budget cut only proves that through collective action, we will be able to engage a government that clings to its illogical reasons for implementing flawed policies. This administration’s conscious neglect leaves us with no recourse but to demonstrate a strong force of defiance.
Oppose state abandonment of education and social services!
Junk MRT/LRT Fare Hike!
Repeal Oil Deregulation Law!
Oppose Public-Private Partnerships!
Struggle for National Democracy!
Black Shirt Day Every Friday in Protest of Fare Hikes
February 09, 2011 "Diliman Commune Lives On...Iskolar ng Bayan, Lingkod ng Sambayanan"
11:30am-1pm Cultural Program, Tribute to UP Martyrs
February 24, 2011 Boycott Classes Against State Abandonment of Education and Social Services!
February 28, 2011 March to Mendiola
—League of Filipino Students
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