By Pip Hinman and Peter Boyle
In the face of escalating protests, the Ramos government of the Philippines was forced to suspend an unpopular oil price rise on February 7. This followed a week of militant protests and the formation of the broadest opposition coalition since the last days of the Marcos dictatorship.
The January 28 price rise was for an average of P1.00 per litre but soon led to rises of up to 30% in transport fares and a 9% rise in electricity charges. This spelled disaster for the millions of Filipinos living below the poverty line.
The rise had been demanded by the oil companies in order to boost the Oil Price Stabilisation Fund (OPSF), which covers the oil companies for discrepancies between the price of oil on the world market and the regulated price in the Philippines. The OPSF is raised through a 100% tax on petroleum products but is seriously depleted because the government has been dipping into it for other purposes. The government has also decreed additional oil levies simply to raise more revenue for itself.
On January 31, the Roll Back Coalition (KRB), was initiated by the forces that built the 100,000-strong November 30 rally in Manila. The KRB was soon joined by several opposition politicians, manufacturing industry representatives, the lawyers' association and Catholic bishops.
The KRB demanded: a rolling back of oil prices to the January 27 level; the scrapping of oil levies; establishment of a committee, including union, people's organisation and opposition representatives, to work out other ways of raising revenue; abolition of the OPSF; and abolition of the Energy Regulatory Board (ERB).
On February 9, the ERB was expected to respond to the oil companies' second demand for a 12% increase in profit margins. This would mean a further P1.00 per litre price hike. So the KRB decided to call for a nationwide people's protest on February 9. This was to be a welgang bayan (people's strike), including work stoppages, transport strikes, mass assemblies, human barricades and a big demonstration.
Daily actions including smaller rallies, marches and barricades were organised by various groups prior to February 9.
On February 1, the Alex Boncayo Brigade (the urban partisan group of the Communist Party of the Philippines Manila-Rizal) claimed responsibility for three bombs which went off in the offices of Shell Philippines, Caltex and Petron (the Philippines national oil corporation). There were no injuries.
The following day, women staged a protest action outside the ERB building, where they burned containers of oil-based products.
On February 3, activists from Makabayan, a new socialist organisation, staged a "die-in" in one of Metro Manila's major shopping districts, Cubao. Drivers and pedestrians cheered and clapped, and employees in nearby buildings showered the demonstrators with confetti.
That same day 1000 members of urban poor organisations rallied at the Mendiola Bridge, near the Malacanang presidential palace.
Support for the campaign grew rapidly. Even the shadowy Reformed Armed Forces Movement (RAM), which split the military before the fall of Marcos, declared its support for the February 9 protest. Then on February 6, Cardinal Jaime Sin, the head of the Catholic Church, directed priests to assemble their parishioners to march on February 9.
Early the next morning, President Fidel Ramos met for three hours with KRB representatives and finally agreed to suspend the oil price hike for a month and to convene a committee composed of seven members of the KRB and seven government representatives. The announcement coincided with a 5000-strong rally organised by the new progressive union federation, United Workers for Change (BMP), which arose out of a split with the May First Movement (KMU) last year.
Sanlakas, a new umbrella group of progressive mass organisations which broke from Bayan last year, hailed this as a victory for the people's movement. Never before in the history of opposition to oil price rises has a reversal been won, a spokesperson told Green Left Weekly. Sanlakas played a leading role in building the KRB.
The KRB called off the people's strike but went ahead with a rally on February 9.