PHILIPPINES
QUEZON CITY – The Philippine government's decision to extend a US$1-billion loan to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to supplement the Fund's Financial Transaction Plan (FTP) of $456 billion to contain the economic crisis in Europe is an "arrogant pretension of a country very much in debt," according to the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC).
In a protest action outside the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) building along East Ave. in Quezon City, FDC members lambasted the government for "being fast in allowing the IMF to manage our money, yet being slow in allocating funds for basic social and economic services."
News from the G-20 Meeting at Lagos, Mexico last June 18-19 carried an announcement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde that the Philippines is among the twenty countries which pledged to increase the IMF fund to assist economies going bankrupt and stabilize the world monetary system which continues to shake under the impact of the global financial and economic crisis.
The Philippine pledge amounts to US$1 billion. The announcement was immediately confirmed by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. and President Aquino's Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda. This is on top of earlier Philippine contributions which amounted to SDR 163.8 million or about US$251.5 million as of December 31, 2011. [1]
As women who primarily carry both the privilege and burden of social reproduction and care for the human family and ecology, and participate as well in activities that drive societies and economic production, we express our deep concern at the debates and discussions assessing the last two decades since the first Earth Summit and the solutions being forwarded to address the conditions of crises we are caught in today.
The Green Economy
A major push coming from UN agencies, corporations and North governments has taken the form of the Green Economy – the framework that will supposedly address crisis conditions in water and food, energy, the economy, climate and the environment. But we find that behind this cunningly coined concept, is the clear intent by neoliberal forces, primarily corporations, to monetize and commercialize nature, thereby addressing the current crisis of capitalism and pursuing goals of extraction, unhampered growth, mindless consumerism, wealth accumulation and monopolization. This is simply a further elaboration of the ideological framework of neoliberalism that is now being extended to nature.
Expect more natural disasters, social and economic inequality and marginalization in the near future once the United States and other Northern countries succeeded in ramming through its proposed "Green Economy" in the upcoming Rio+20 Conference.
A historic conference to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on June 20-22, this year, the Rio+20 Conference or the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), will review the extent of compliance by the participants to the first UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in 1992 also in Rio.
MANILA, Philippines – As members of the Joint Congressional Power Commission (JCPC) meet on Thursday to discuss the Mindanao power situation, members of advocacy group Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) staged a protest urging lawmakers to exempt the Agus and Pulangi hydropower complexes in Mindanao from being privatized, and to replace the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) for its unfulfilled promises.
