No to CHARTER CHANGE!!!

For almost a decade since Gloria M. Arroyo sat in Malacaсang as president and is now facing the end of her term. Cases of human rights violation and corruption hounds her as she leaves. While her term is not yet over, there are moves to extend her term with the railroading of Charter Change (Cha cha) by her allies in Congress.
Any attempt to prolong her term will be opposed by ordinary people including scientists and engineers. Cha cha threats our public utilities as it will be sell out to foreign companies, nationalization of this is what makes us stand against Cha cha.
Public utilities are services and infrastructure that are used by the people to facilitate their daily activities and economic production. These utilities should be accessible and affordable to the people. Limiting access to these services would make, in general, daily activities more difficult for the people.
Arroyo wants to delete the ownership cap on public utilities found in the protectionist economic provisions in the 1987 Constitution. The deletion together with other provisions promoting liberalization provide for greater economic power and access to aliens and foreign corporations and will result in greater damage to the economic interest of the Filipino people. These proposals include granting foreign individuals and corporations greater economic and even political rights in the Philippines than before.
Privatization and liberalization has made public utilities inaccessible due to ever increasing costs. Water privatization has led to nearly five times increase in rates compared to 1997 rates; power costs continue to rise unabated; fuel costs has danced its own chacha with rate increases always larger and more frequent than token rollbacks resulting to doubling of fuel prices in only five years; toll fees have increased twice or moreall examples of the failure of privatization to make affordable vital public utilities.
The proposed charter revisions in allowing 100\% foreign ownership and control of public utilities would only perpetuate this situation. Furthermore, the guarantees against expropriation, remittance of foreign exchange in terms of earnings, profits, and dividends on investments, employment of aliens, protection of patent, repatriation of capital and ownership of buildings and land offered to investors does not bode well to local investors and industries. Tax exemptions and preferential treatment mean that the government loses in these foreign investments. In addition, allowing pass-on provisions on losses and loans and putting profit over service spells increasing rates and poor service.
A government serious developing our economy and desirous to ensure the welfare of the people should be providing the necessary infrastructure and services for them. It must therefore ensure that public utilities are part of the basic industries it should be building. The nationalization of public utilities should be done with the building of local industries for domestic production. This cannot be done by a government that sells our national patrimony, allows foreign control of vital utilities, and is uninterested in genuine industrial development such as the current one in Malacaсang.