APL-Women: Time is up for Gloria!

July 6, 2005
Weeks have already passed and the nation is still gripped with the scandal besetting the presidency of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. However, the foremost question now is will she still be able to hold on to power, as she would like us to perceive and believe?

We, the APL-Women, would like to stress that the issues are not so much about the wiretapped voice of PGMA conversing with "a COMELEC official" ensuring her of victory in the last presidential elections, neither is it the alleged Jueteng or illegal gambling pay-offs involving her immediate family amounting to hundreds of millions of pesos.

Long before these issues grabbed the headlines, PGMA was already implementing programs that have been, are and will be detrimental and hostile to the interest of Filipinos, especially to women. Last July 1, the government implemented the Expanded-Value Added Tax (E-VAT) that immediately sky-rocketed the prices of basic commodities, including pump prices of gasoline and LPG, to astronomic heights making it virtually unbearable to the poor. Immediately, gasoline costs increased by as much as P3.00 per liter, while the LPG that common households use daily to cook food went up by as much as P30.00 per kg. And this does not yet include the E-VAT that will also be imposed on electricity for the first time, thus furthering the miseries of the consumers.

The Supreme Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order or TRO on E-VAT on the first day of its implementation. But how long will this last, now that the government has appealed for its revocation? Certainly, the Arroyo government has only brought us more miseries contrary to what she had promised, especially to women who have been already hard put on how to budget the already meager income of the family. Under this situation, more women will be forced to find other means to augment the income of the family.

We denounce PGMA for her continuous insensitivity to the plight of the women especially to the majority poor. It is because of these grave economic impositions, plus the recent scandals affecting her moral ascendancy, that the APL-Women call for her ouster and vow to continue the struggle together with other sectors in establishing a government that will truly represent the interests of the Filipino people, especially the majority of whom are women.