Letter to the editor – Arroyo's promise of job creation

The Arroyo government claims that job creation is its primary goal. In reality, its overriding concern for political survival is what is driving its policy decisions, however negatively these may impact on the jobs crisis.

Furthermore, its actual policy thrust is to maintain price stability and achieve fiscal balance, primarily to ensure its continued access to credit in the international credit markets. In this sense, job creation is incidental to these macroeconomic objectives and plays a less than central role in macro policy.

The Arroyo government's pledge to generate jobs lacks a thorough understanding of the problem of joblessness. Because of this, many of its established policies in fact aggravate the jobs crisis rather than alleviate it.

Indiscriminate trade liberalization and the lowering of tariffs have threatened industries and therefore jobs. The overriding need to keep inflation down is maintaining a high unemployment rate, despite empirical studies showing that there is in fact room for relaxing monetary targets in order to create jobs.

Spending cuts and higher indirect taxes inhibit growth rather than stimulate the economy. A peso that is appreciating against other currencies undermines rather than protects jobs, and penalizes overseas Filipinos who have been forced to leave the country in search of work.

Rather than completing agrarian reform, the Arroyo government is subverting it, resulting in the further consolidation of land ownership. Rather than upholding the ancestral domains of indigenous communities, the Arroyo government is unabashedly pushing for the entry of mining interests, further undermining the fundamental right of indigenous peoples. To add to their insecurity, the push towards mining endangers an already threatened environment.

Nor does the Arroyo government have an industrial or rural development plan to ensure that all Filipinos have decent jobs. On the contrary, any job will do, no matter how low-skilled, how fleeting, and how inadequate it may be. Like the elections and the impeachment vote, it's all about numbers - and convincing the international credit ratings agencies that the government is "reforming".

Ernie Edralin
Akbayan Partylist