Sectors lambast Supreme Court for favoring E-VAT

Militant groups, representatives of the church and consumers condemned the Supreme Court for ruling in favor of the implementation of the expanded value added tax.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan said the High Tribunal has "proven itself to be an effective institution of the ruling class to validate anti-people policies by declaring the E-VAT law as legal and constitutional."

Archdiocese of Cebu media liaison officer Msgr. Achilles Dakay yesterday said that in the long run, the consumers would be badly affected because the burden will be passed on to them.

"This will sadden the people because despite the surging oil crisis in the country, the wages of workers remain the same," he noted.

Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Vidal, who had been vocal against the implementation of the EVAT, is still in Manila and has not yet issued any statement on the latest development.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the E-VAT, the Arroyo government's centerpiece tax reform, aimed at helping on how to solve the fiscal crisis in the country.

But Bayan Muna said that with the implementation of the law, people can expect the oil prices to skyrocket to an unprecedented high, prices of basic commodities to shoot up, and the quality of life of the people to further diminish to subhuman levels.

The group added that the E-VAT, being a "regressive tax by nature," would affect the poor too much and penalize the honest taxpayers while the rich evade billions worth of taxes.

Bayan also shrugged off the claim of the government that the economy had grown, saying that the truth is that 90 percent of the poorest Filipinos live on only P130 per day or lower while the country's unemployment rate remains high at 12.9 percent. It further said that 432,000 farmers and fisherfolk have been displaced due to land conversion and the influx of foreign agricultural products through liberalization while oil price hikes have become a weekly phenomenon.

It noted that in Central Visayas, minimum daily wage is at P223, a far cry from the daily cost of living of at least P647.

Bayan said that despite the public clamor to junk the E-VAT, Arroyo had "stubbornly" pushed for it to be railroaded in the legislature. With the recent development, militant groups said they would hold massive protests against the Arroyo administration to force her to step down.

Association of Concerned Commuters and Consumers and the Association of Concerned Texters will also work with the price monitoring councils and different local government units to launch a massive education/information drive and establish a well-coordinated system to monitor the prices of basic commodities. - Wenna A. Berondo, Jasmin R. Uy with Joeberth M. Ocao