Gloria resolve to step down
very clear, spokesmen insist
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The presidents of the Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Bacolod Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry yesterday said they agree with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that her economic policies have enabled the Philippines to survive amid the global economic crisis.

“The strong, bitter and unpopular revenue measures of the past few years have spared our country the worst of the global financial shocks. They gave us the resources to stimulate the economy,” Arroyo had said in her State of the Nation Address Monday.

The president’s political will has helped the country survive the global economic crisis, Benjamin Ortega, BFCCCI president, said..

If the President had not done what she did to improve the economy, the rate of hunger and poverty may have reached a sky-rocketing figure.

That was the reaction of Deputy Presidential spokesman Anthony Golez yesterday to the statement of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Negros secretary general Felipe Levy Gelle that hunger and poverty worsened during the Arroyo Administration and that the Social Weather Station data even showed that about 16 million Filipinos had experienced hunger as of December 2008.

But Golez said, “If hunger has increased by 5 or 6 percent now, it will be worst if the President did not implement the basic macro economic fundamentals that we are using now.”

Deputy Presidential spokesman Anthony Golez Jr. yesterday requested the local government of Bacolod City and Negros Occidental to make sure that the tools, equipment and accessories (TEA’s) for search and rescue that will be turned over to them today, are well maintained.

Golez, who is deputy administrator of the Office of Civil Defense, said he is entrusting the equipment to the local government units so the liability will be transferred to them.

At the Disaster Mitigation and Preparedness Capability Program yesterday in Bacolod City, he said that there will be a signing of the memorandum of agreement today, adding “If these equipment are placed in the wrong hands, it could be disastrous.”