The Palace took the unusual step of presenting Solicitor General Jose Calida to the Malacañang Press Corps yesterday. Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella enumerated his credentials: Ateneo Law, former justice undersecretary, 100 percent bar grade in criminal law. Calida did not really have any news to announce. He discussed the possibility of President Duterte declaring martial law. (Only in “extreme cases”). “What if they will bomb Malacañang? Put bomb(s) in our malls. The drug lords will hire assassins to kill him. Some parties might be (in) cahoots in (this) plot.”
Obviously, the Palace has studied all the scenarios. Calida was asked: what if the Supreme Court ruled against martial law, will Duterte comply? Calida, like all officers of the court, should have said yes. He said instead “we will study.”
The SolGen told the press corps: “Just like what Cory [Aquino] did. They did what was outside the Constitution.” Now, that’s disturbing. Cory declared martial law and became a dictator (she signed decrees) for a year until the 1986 Constitution was ratified.
Meanwhile, by some serendipity, President invited 15 businessmen to a private dinner at Malacañang Tuesday, Jan. 17. Their combined wealth easily exceeds $30 billion. The same day, Oxfam published a 38-page report “An Economy for the 99 percent”, a stinging rebuke of the world’s richest and how they acquire wealth. Oxfam said this year only eight men “own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.”
In 2015, the same eight also owned 50 percent of the world’s wealth. In fact, over the years, the share of the world’s richest never fell below 46 percent. Per Oxfam:
Since 2015, the richest one percent has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet.
Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs—a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.
The incomes of the poorest 10 percent of people increased by less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest one percent increased 182 times as much.
A CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 people in working in garment factories in Bangladesh.
In the US, over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50 percent has been zero, whereas incomes of the top one percent have grown 300 percent.
In Vietnam, the country’s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in 10 years.
At the dinner with the President were: Alfred Ty, GT Capital Holdings Corp. co-vice chairman; Manny Pangilinan, First Pacific managing director and CEO; Federico Lopez, First Philippine Holdings Corp. chairman and CEO; Doris Magsaysay Ho, Magsaysay Corp. president and CEO; Michael Tan, LT Group president and COO; George Barcelon, Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president; Kevin Tan, Megaworld Corp. first vice president; Hans Sy, SM Prime Holdings chairman of the Executive Committee; Enrique Razon, International Container Terminal Services (ICTSI) chairman, Cong. Arthur Yap, Bohol 3rd District Representative; Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; Presidential Adviser Joey Concepcion; Tomas Alcantara, Alsons Group chairman; Erramon Aboitiz, Aboitiz Equity Ventures president and CEO; Alice Eduardo, Sta. Elena Construction and Development Corp. president and CEO; Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Ayala Corp. chairman and CEO; Tony Tan Caktiong, Jollibee Foods Corp. chairman and CEO; Edgar “Injap” Sia, DoubleDragon Properties Corp. chairman and CEO; and Domingo Yap, Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (FFCCCII) vice president.
Duterte asked the tycoons for help in pushing small business entrepreneurship, inclusive growth, anti-drugs campaign, and federalism which Joey Concepcion said they all supported.
It is obvious Duterte is establishing rapport with the country’s top tycoons, rallying them behind his program of government. The administration has a package of tax reforms which if approved by Congress would force businessmen to pay ten to 20 times the taxes they currently pay. Their luxury cars will be taxed 60 percent, for instance. So a BMW that retails for P5 million will be P8 million. The diesel than runs those cars will be slapped a P10 per liter tax (from zero at present to 30 percent). The highest individual income tax rate will remain at 35 percent. Duterte brings the “killer” or fear factor behind those tax proposals—meaning if the businessmen don’t behave or help, the President has the power of life and death over their businesses. Remember: Duterte is planning martial law whether the Supreme Court agrees or not.
According to Oxfam, big business and the super-rich are fueling the inequality crisis by dodging taxes, driving down wages and using their power to influence politics. It calls for a fundamental change in the way we manage our economies so that they work for all people, and not just a fortunate few.
The richest are accumulating wealth at such an astonishing rate that the world could see its first trillionaire in just 25 years. This means a dollar trillionaire would need to spend $1 million every day for 2,738 years to spend $1 trillion.
Yet, 10 percent of seven billion people survive on just $2 a day;
They are angry, of course. Inequality was cited by Oxfam as a significant factor in the election of Donald Trump in the US, the election of President Duterte in the Philippines, and Brexit in the UK.
Contrary to popular belief, most of the very wealthy are not self-made. “Half the world’s billionaires either inherited their wealth or accumulated it through industries which are prone to corruption and cronyism,” sneers Oxfam. These ultra rich don’t deserve their riches, their wealth having been just been either inherited or stolen at the expense of the people.
Corporate tax dodging costs poor countries at least $100 billion every year, reports Oxfam. This is enough money to provide an education for the 124 million children who aren’t in school and fund healthcare interventions that could prevent the deaths of at least six million children every year.