Bribing the Poor

Gloria says she'll be giving cash support to more than 4 million poor families in the Philippines. At first, this is for the havoc caused by her rice trading buddies when they spiked the price of rice up. Then, she announced that tuition fees should be lowered after all schools have already raised them. The latest in the string of publicity stunts was her announcement saying that government intends to subsidize those "lifeline" users of electricity by giving them 500 pesos to pay for their Meralco bills.

Question is--how about us in the middle class? We also need support. Go to the supermarket Mrs. Arroyo, and you'll know what I mean.

Do you know that a kilo of commercial rice cost 50 pesos per kilo now in the supermarkets? If your consumption is 2 kilos a day, one family needs 3,000 pesos per month just to be able to eat rice.

Electricity rates have gone up. Diesel prices are now within 46-47 pesos per liter. With the pronouncement of these oil companies, prices will shoot up to even 60 pesos per liter in the next couple of days. That's nearly 3,500 pesos per full tank!

Infant milk has gone up too. Prices of fish, meats and even processed ones have tripled since last week. Where's those price controls when you need one!

Everyone needs some support from the government, not just the poorest of the poor. It's time for government to look for long-term solutions, instead of dole-outs. Though I understand where Mrs. Arroyo is coming from, nonetheless, there should be some drastic measures that government should be able to implement to avert a possible outbreak of violence due to higher prices of food stuffs.

We know that it's election time and this administration seems to be bribing the poor. Well, in realpolitik, that's something which the opposition does not have---resources. However, Mrs. Arroyo would probably be surprised with the outcome in 2010. Those results would be quite a shocker for Mrs. Arroyo since people are just waiting for that election to express their anger against her.