Press release July 15, 2008

BAYAN-Lanao condemns Arroyo's response to rising prices

Iligan City – Bogus, pathetic and utterly hopeless.

This was how more than 100 militants from the progressive group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) here described the Arroyo Government's response to the brewing economic crisis that has sent inflation rates soaring in the past months.

The group protested against Arroyo's failure to control the rising prices of rice, petroleum and other basic commodities. With their faces painted with the words "OUST GLORIA", the group further warned the government of more intense protests leading towards her eight State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 28.

The price of regular-milled commercial rice has doubled from its December 2007 price of 24.00 pesos per kilo to the present 48.00 – 50.00 pesos per kilo price. Local oil companies, on the other hand, have made it a habit to increase by 0.50 to 1.50 pesos per litre the price of petroleum at the end of every week. All this while the proposed law for the 125 peso across-the-board wage increase still languishing in the halls of the Congress.

"With the number of hungry and discontented people willing to 'take matters to the streets' rising rapidly, Mrs. Arroyo and her minions should be in crisis management mode and race against the people's patience to provide real-time solutions their creative minds can concoct", said BAYAN-Lanao Secretary-General Kristian Mark Urbano.

Urbano further said that Arroyo, in a show of "impassiveness to the masses' sufferings", has "constantly rejected the appeals made by different peoples' organizations to control the prices of rice, petroleum and other basic commodities, and to scrap anti-people laws such as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law and the Oil Deregulation Law."

The protest was concluded by a die-in to demonstrate the deepening misery of the people under the fascist, puppet and anti-people Arroyo Government. #