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Is there glory with Gloria?

A friend asked me last February 1, if there was ever a glory on Gloria. Just when the 2% increase on the 10% value added tax was implemented, she seriously asked this as a mother who tried stretching her husband’s salary every time prices of prime commodities increase. She said the taxes drain all her husband hard-earned salary.

She does not only complain of her husband’s job irregularity, which she righteously roots back to the State’s absence of appropriate workers’ program. Her husband’s job security is always threatened. She keeps questioning how Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s dream of million jobs could be realized.

Our discussion focused on the expanded value added tax passed last year and its latest increase. I told her how GMA’s allies in congress who dominate both chambers, passed the law despite serious opposition from progressive legislators. I also shared with her that all the Cordillera congressional representatives were among those who voted in favor of the tax measure. She was angry about it. She said that for an important law like this, our representatives should have conducted consultations and they must have taken the peoples’ position.

I understand her feelings towards our politics, which is characterized by top-down decision-making. Politicians, the so-called trapos or the traditional politicians, act based on their personal interest rather than the peoples’ issues. By the way, these were among the issues in the EDSA revolution 20 years ago, which remained unattended to even after the EDSA 2.

She wanted to clarify where the taxes collected go, and my answer was based on our taxation principles, the taxes should be for public purpose. We scrutinized how the GMA administration plans its appropriation. Based on some news report, 72% of the P75 billion to be collected will be used for paying our debt, while less than 30% (approximately P22.5 billion) is for social services.

“Isn’t that contradictory to that (taxation) principle?” she asked. I laughed so loud, and explained that State principles are not necessarily realized, especially with our country’s state of governance. I explained that the EVAT is, in fact, a regressive taxation, as it afflicts people with no regular income at all.

Her questions went further on how we incurred the debt and if we have benefited from it. It is like an old story, “Parang sirang plaka,” (Just like a broken record) our Tagalog saying goes. She admitted that she failed to read my past column about this. Though a little bit slighted, I summarized that the debts were incurred during the establishment of the Philippine state and the bulk during the Marcos years.

We did not benefit from it, only the cronies and close friends of Marcos did. We are still paying for these, despite its allocation of nearly half the annual national budget due to Marcos’ automatic appropriation law as enacted by congress. GMA adopted the same policy as concretized by the latest value added tax.

I asked her the question she earlier asked: Is there glory with Gloria? She just laughed. Yes, laughing seems to be the only thing free for now, to relieve yourself from the crisis – dahil walang glorya kay Gloria. #

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