Why are oil prices rising, and what we can we do about it?

Overpriced gasoline and diesel, for instance, gave oil firms an estimated P38.47 billion (US$757.13 million) in additional income, of which P4.62 billion ($90.93 million) went to the government as value-added tax (VAT).

By ARNOLD PADILLA
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Since the start of the year, local pump prices have increased significantly. The government, as always, explains this as the operation of global market forces. Remember that the government deregulated the oil industry, and the country imports almost all its petroleum needs. As such, local price adjustments merely reflect the movement of international oil prices and fluctuations in the peso-dollar exchange rates. At least, that is what government and the oil firms want us to believe.

P4-5 overpricing at the pump this year

But this explanation is not as straightforward as it appears to be. Pump price adjustments do not reflect global price movements. As of the first week of October, the price of gasoline in the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) has gone up by about P11.49 ($0.23) per liter. Meanwhile, the pump price of gasoline as of Oct. 5 has jumped by P16.55 $(0.33) per liter – P5.06 ($0.10) higher than MOPS. The same thing is true with diesel. MOPS diesel increased by around ?10.86 per liter while the pump price of diesel surged by P15.00 ($0.30)– a difference of P4.14 ($0.087) per liter.

MOPS is the benchmark that the country uses for local petroleum products, according to the Department of Energy (DOE). It is “the daily average of all trading transactions of diesel and gasoline as assessed and summarized by Standard and Poor’s Platts, a Singapore-based market wire service.”

The difference between the adjustments in MOPS and actual price changes at the pump is a form of overpricing that has thrived under the Oil Deregulation Law. This 25-year-old law allows oil companies to implement automatic price adjustments based on global price movements.

By implementing higher price hikes or lower rollbacks than international price adjustments, oil firms and the government can collect billions of pesos in extra profits and taxes. Overpriced gasoline and diesel, for instance, gave them an estimated P38.47 billion (US$757.13 million) in additional income, of which P4.62 billion ($90.93 million) went to the government as value-added tax (VAT). This exploitation of the consumers by the oil companies and government becomes even more reprehensible amid the pandemic that has massively wiped away jobs and incomes.

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Grace #Halalan2022

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Talking 2022 means talking about the elephant in the room that is Grace Poe.

It is clear to anyone who has a sense of how elections are won and lost, who has as starting point Duterte-Marcos’s massive propaganda machinery, who looks at surveys critically vis a vis one’s own political biases, that the only way to win this is to bring together the business sector, the middle classes, and the mass vote behind one candidate.

It was clear, since the 2019 Senatorial election results, that this would be Grace.

And no, you’re not talking to a Grace Poe fan. Search through this site and my social media accounts and you’ll see that I have had the worst opinions of her in terms of where she stands on oligarchs, at the same time that I have been impressed by how she takes the side of the transport sector and commuters in the Senate inquiries she’s led. This doesn’t make me two-faced. It makes HER a Senator, and it makes me a citizen who agrees as much as I might disagree with the people in power.

But that IS the thing isn’t it? The right to vote is tied to a sense of our responsibility to nation, not to the people we vote into positions of power. We are not their fans, or their followers; positions of power aren’t Facebook Pages or Twitter accounts. This is about citizenship and about having a sense of what nation needs at any given point, relative to the decisions that our leaders make for us, in our names, using our funds, regardless of whether we voted for them or not.

No one seems to see this anymore, and this is no surprise. Duterte propaganda has pushed even the most sane, most rational among us to turn to fanaticism and troll discourse, which is easy to fall prey to on social media, where people across Left to Liberal leanings have enjoyed deeper echo chambers. Yes, you will get leaders, from VP Leni to Makabayan talking about uniting the opposition, but none of that matters when their actors are first to engage in divisive, DDS-like behavior on public platforms.

Liberal actors throw around labels like “enabler” and “trapo” forgetting that we can list down as many from the Liberal side who are both, but more importantly failing to realize that this WILL NOT TRANSLATE to votes for VP Leni. It also only reminds us of the Liberals’ false purity politics and the moral highground that defined the elitism of the PNoy years.

The Liberals and the Ka Leody side have also discredited “winnability” as an important part of choosing a candidate on our side. This is silly. Yes, winnability and surveys shouldn’t play such an important part in who is encouraged to run. But are rules going to change just because you put up a losing candidate? Of course not. In fact putting up a candidate that is sure to lose serves Duterte-Marcos and no one else. Putting up a losing candidate is playing right into the hands of Duterte-Marcos, because they are experts at playing this electoral game and using the rules to their advantage.

You want to change the rules, you work on changing it six years before the next Presidential election. There’s no changing it with eight months to go.

Troll discourse, divisive behavior, discrediting winnability, and refusing to work from election data and facts, have been what we’ve lived with all of 2021. It was clear to me in May that unity was impossible, not with this set of actors that were leading the way, and no matter 1Sambayan trying to hide its liberal convictions (anyone with half a brain could tell this was a liberal formation from a mile away).

The social media noise and clutter, the culture of cancelling and trolling on our side, has led us to this point. It has led us to Lacson-Sotto, two (dirty?) old men who are classier, dignified versions of Duterte, both conservative, both militaristic, both representative of a misogyny that we have had enough of the past six years. It has led us to Isko Moreno who, for all the good he has done in Manila and despite good speeches, sounds like nothing more but budget Duterte-Marcos in impromptu interviews: the masa I’m-Juan-dela-Cruz rhetoric ala Duterte with no depth or vision, combined with the clean, good looking, educated voice ala Marcos. Kuya Germs would be proud of this performance.

It has led us to this point when no one wants to admit anymore, that our biggest chances of winning 2022 versus Duterte-Marcos-Pacquiao would be to have a Grace Poe run. She who is conservative enough (Cojuangco-supported enough) to get business sector support; she who is kolehiyala enough to get the middle class vote; and she who is FPJ, Susan Roces, and Ang Probinsyano enough to get the masa vote. She who has shown us her mettle with how she has dealt with the Duterte government’s disrespect of our transport works and jeepney drivers. She who was only one of two people (the other was Senator Nancy Binay) who didn’t do a Duterte fist when the 2019 Senatorial winners were proclaimed.

She who is in surveys regardless of whether she campaigns or not.

If the goal is to beat Duterte-Marcos-Pacquiao. If the goal is a unity that goes beyond our echo chambers, that goes beyond our social class, that goes beyond our notions of who deserves this. If our focus is on who will win this with us who will not just be controlled by politicians and business (Pacquiao), that will not just sell our resources to China and kill us (Duterte), that will not just continue a legacy of violence and plunder (Marcos), that will not just be a variation of the misogyny and violence of Duterte (Isko-Lacson-Sotto), that will actually allow us our democratic rights to dialogue, protest, and freedoms back.

If the goal is to WIN this, so that we can finally really defeat the tyrants among us, Grace Poe is our saving grace.

Anyone else is a losing proposition, some more murderous than others. ***

More like, Sept 22 #MartialLaw

MARCOS. My countrymen, as of the 21st of this month, I signed Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire Philippines under martial law. This proclamation was to be implemented upon my clearance, and clearance was granted at 9 o’clock in the evening of the 22nd, last night. [AF-001: Proclamation No. 1081 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWu46IyLKwI ]

Signed on the 21st, ordered implemented on the 22nd, announced on the 23rd. Marcos would celebrate it on the 21st and we continue to mark it as the September day when Martial Law was declared, even as Manolo Quezon in “Declaration of Martial Law” insists on the 23rd as the correct date:

… the actual date for Martial Law was not the numerologically-auspicious (for Marcos) 21st, but rather, the moment that Martial Law was put into full effect, which was after the nationwide address of Ferdinand Marcos as far as the nation was concerned: September 23, 1972. By then, personalities considered threats to Marcos (Senators Benigno S. Aquino Jr., Jose Diokno, Francisco Rodrigo and Ramon Mitra Jr., and members of the media such as Joaquin Roces, Teodoro Locsin Sr., Maximo Soliven and Amando Doronila) had already been rounded up, starting with the arrest of Senator Aquino at midnight on September 22, and going into the early morning hours of September 23, when 100 of the 400 personalities targeted for arrest were already detained in Camp Crame by 4 a.m. [Undated. Official Gazette. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/featured/declaration-of-martial-law/]

But Ninoy Aquino, who was arrested close to midnight of the 22nd, noted it as the day Marcos went totalitarian.

NINOY. On September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos established a totalitarian regime. On that fateful day, he proclaimed himself dictator. He issued General Order No. 1 in which he proclaims that: “I shall govern the nation and direct the operation of the entire government, including all its agencies and instrumentalities, and shall exercise all the powers and prerogatives appurtenant and incident to my position as … Commander-in-Chief of all Armed Forces of the Philippines.”

He placed his acts beyond the reach of the courts. In General Order No. 3, issued that September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos decreed that “the Judiciary shall continue to function in accordance with its present organization and personnel, and shall try and decide in accordance with existing laws all criminal and civil cases, except the following: Those involving the validity, legality or constitutionality of any decree, order, or acts issued, promulgated or performed by me or by my duly designated representative purusant to Proclamation 1081, dated September 21, 1972.”

On the same September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos killed press freedom in the Philippines. In his Martial Law Letter of Instruction No. 1, he ordered the secretaries of information and national defense “to take over and control or cause the taking over of all such newspapers, magazines, radio and television facilities and all other media of communications, wherever they are, for the duration of the present national emergency, or until otherwise ordered by me or by my duly designated representative.”

This tore away – in one stroke of the Marcos pen – the constitutional shield that safeguarded press freedom.

Freedom of the press, as we knew it—the people’s right to know, the very bedrock of democracy—died with that martial law LOI #1. The independent Manila Times and its sister publications, echo chambers of the people’s sentiments since the early American colonial rule, and the weekly magazine Philippines Free Press, always fearless and historically an unpleasant thorn in the side of those who governed, were closed by the martial law Brown Shirts at midnight September 22, the first day of the Marcos martial rule.

Also on September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos dealt the common people’s freedom a series of mortal blows. Organized labor was singled out for the most devastating blow. He outlawed strikes, the only potent weapon in the puny arsenal of the workingman, and, as for the rest of the populace, he decreed as “strictly prohibited” any and all rallies, any and all demonstrations, any and all “other forms of group action”—under pain, for violators, of arrest and incarceration “for the duration of the national emergency” in General Order No. 5.  [Testimony from a Prison Cell. 1984. pp 43-48]

The writer and editor Gregorio C. Brillantes in “Brief History of Martial Law” is also quite certain about the 22nd.

It was not September 21, but September 22, 1972, that signaled the actual start of Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law regime. To be exact, 9:11 p.m. on that day 17 years ago … and the exact hour of the commencement of that infamy, are provided us by I.M. Escolastico, our friend and press brod of long standing (though he prefers to take things sitting down). … Ticong cites as his primary source or authority for the martial law data no less than the extraordinary author of Proclamation 1081: Ferdinand Edralin (Ferdie, Andy, Apo, Tuta, Hitler) Marcos, who in 1980 or eight years after the event found the gall, cost, and ghost to write, in Notes on the New Society, now mercifully out of print, that “the instrument ‘Proclaiming a State of Martial Law in the Philippines’ had been signed on the 21st of September and transmitted to the Defense Authorities for implementation … clearance for which was given at 9:00 p.m., 22nd of September, after the ambush of Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile at 8:10 p.m. at Wack Wack Subdivision, Mandaluyong, Rizal.” [Esquire Magazine. Sept 21 2017. https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/notes-and-essays/a-brief-history-of-martial-law-a1789-20170921-lfrm3 ]

And so is journalist Sol Jose Vanzi in “Little known events of dark September, 1972 come to light.”

On the evening of September 22, 1972, I watched the discreet unloading from military trucks of armed men in uniform at major intersections in Metro Manila. An unusually large number of police patrol cars roamed the streets. Overhead, helicopters were circling the city.

I knew Philippine military choppers were not certified for night flight. It was too dark so see any markings that would identify the aircraft. I sensed something big was happening, something that political observers had been talking about for years but never really expected to see: martial law had been imposed.

To confirm my suspicions, I phoned the Manila Times switchboard and got a curt military-sounding male; the same thing happened when I tried the office of Vic Maliwanag, Manila Bureau Chief of United Press International, then the world’s leading news agency.

All TV stations were off the air, save for KBS (Benedicto-owned Kanlaon Broadcasting System) which was showing cartoons. Privately-owned radio stations were likewise silent; government radio stations Voice of the Philippines and PBS were playing nothing but old songs. [Manila Bulletin. Sept 21 2020. https://mb.com.ph/2020/09/21/little-known-events-of-dark-september-1972-come-to-light/ ]

Birthdays and anniversaries are all about the beginning, not the “full effect” of some stage of implementation. It doesn’t matter that Marcos disclosed the declaration of martial law only a day later, on the 23rd. It doesn’t matter when, what date, a birth is announced. What matters, what is marked and remembered, is the beginning, the birthday itself, the starting point. By most accounts this was an hour or so after JPE was ambushed kunó by communists kunó the evening of September 22 1972. #NeverAgain

ninoy was shot on the stairs, not on the tarmac

i’ve been writing a book on ninoy these last three years, about his life and about his death.  on this 38th anniversary i find accounts by rappler posted on facebook and by abs-cbn news posted on twitter saying that ninoy was “killed on the tarmac.”  my virgo self is dismayed.

according to my research, which includes reading through the Agrava Board’s Majority Report (1984) and the Sandiganbayan’s Hermosisima Decision (1990), ninoy was  on the 11th step (of 20) of the bridgestairs when he was shot by one of the soldiers behind him.  i imagine that he was then propped up and carried by the burly soldiers on either side of him down the rest of the stairs to the tarmac, and then unceremoniously dropped a few steps away from the AVSECOM van that would carry him away.

the story that he was “killed on the tarmac” is the tall tale of the military (echoed by olivas, ver, and marcos) who claim/ed that ninoy was already on the tarmac, walking towards the van when “communist hitman” galman sneaked in from behind and shot him.  all the hard evidence and credible eyewitness reports point to the contrary, that is, to the stairs and the soldiers.

in less than a minute from the time ninoy exited the plane and took his first step down the stairs, both ninoy and galman were down, and ninoy taken away.  it was quite a feat of planning and precision that of course the marcos military dares not claim credit for, ever.