FDC & YAD In The News: On the P1 billion dole-outs for education

Our press briefing and photo op yesterday [08 June 2008] with the Youth Against Debt (YAD) against the P1-billion “Katas ng VAT” dole-outs of the Arroyo administration for education came out in BusinessMirror (Page 1), Manila Bulletin (Page 15), GMANews.TV (Photo) and Tumbok (Photo).

BusinessMirror
09 June 2008, Page 1
http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/06092008/headlines04.html

Student fund from VAT assailed
By Mia Gonzalez, Reporter
and Jonathan Mayuga, Correspondent

WHILE activist students called the value-added tax (VAT) regressive and the student subsidy drawn from it as just a “Palace gimmick,” Malacañang loudly expressed Sunday its suspicions those calling for the VAT to be removed, or at least suspended from being imposed on oil and electricity, are the rich and the “wannabe Presidents.”

Chief presidential counsel Sergio Apostol said on radio, “If the VAT is suspended, who will benefit—the rich or the poor? The rich are the biggest consumers. So there’s really no reason to suspend it.”

He was silent on the comment by long-time political observers and the political opposition that the VAT on power and fuel could be removed for the poor and retained for the rich.

[READ MORE]

Manila Bulletin
09 June 208, Page 15

Youth Group hits students assistance fund

The Youth Against Debt (YAD) criticized yesterday President Arroyo’s additional P1 Billion fund for students, saying it is a cheap trick to use students and the accessibility problem to education as basis for justification of the value-added tax (VAT).

“Mrs. Arroyo is adding insult to injury. In a desperate attempt to defend VAT amid strong calls to lift the regressive tax measure on oil and power, she is using the students and their parents’ annual school woes as grounds for VAT’s stay,” the anti-debt group said.

YAD said that VAT is a debt, tax more than anything else,” and contrary to what Presidents Arroyo wants us to believe, VAT is causing more harm than benefit,” the youth group said.

GMANews.TV
08 June 2008
Photo by Charlie Magno

Tumbok
09 June 2008, Page 4
Photo by Nino Orbeta (Philippine Daily Inquirer)