|
PRESIDENTIAL aspirants should roll out their respective
economic crisis plan, particularly in solving the
food-and-fuel crises, instead of engaging in daily
battle for “cutest photo or video opportunity,” a
legislator said Monday.
Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi) Rep. Antonio
Alvarez of Palawan said the “crisis road map” that
presidential aspirants or the so-called presidentiables
should sell to the public must be “comprehensive,
feasible and durable.”
Motherhood statements like “zero taxes, free food, high
wages, cheap oil,” he said, are populist posturings
“which the people can easily see through.”
“Those
with Utopian solutions need not apply,” Alvarez said.
“If a
presidential wannabe will propose a program, then it
must be accompanied with an admission on how much it
will cost us in tax pesos because we all know there is
no such thing as a free lunch,” he added.
Alvarez
said that a comprehensive plan from presidential
aspirants is needed because the problem is so complex
that it can’t be solved through press releases retailed
daily.
“For
example, one can call for the repeal of the value-added
tax on oil as the solution to high oil prices. But what
if we have already taken out VAT but gas still sells at
P80 per liter tax-free, what then is your next
solution? The solutions should go beyond the tactical,”
he said
He said
presidential aspirants “should not miss the bus” in
submitting their economic crisis plan “because it’s one
of the best ways that they can be adjudged by their 90
million employers.”
“If a
college applicant is required to submit an essay, an
entrepreneur seeking a loan is asked to submit a
feasibility study, then why can’t those aspiring for the
No.1 post in the land be not required to jot something
that will show their fitness to serve?” Alvarez said.
He said
the 2010 elections should not be a mere contest for
votes but a competition for the best economic platform.
“This is
not a contest on who can define the problems best but on
who can deliver the better solutions. The need is not to
offer criticisms at the highest decibel but to prescribe
solutions that will bring relief,” Alvarez said.
The
legislator said that already there are many aspirants
echoing loudly what the people feel but there’s a lack
of those who can ease their sufferings.
“We have
a surplus of those who amplify our sufferings but a
shortage of those who can alleviate them,” he said.
Alvarez
said that said “the RP version of the US presidential
primaries can assume the nature of a contest on who can
offer workable solutions to the problem of high oil
prices and its domino effect on all commodities.”
|
