Press Release
July 11, 2008

CHIZ SCORES ISAFP INCLUSION IN FOOD, ENERGY SUPERBODY

Opposition senator Chiz Escudero today said, "there is no need to spy on the people to know what they feel during these hard times for their pain is palpable, and their discontent is evident".

This after the palace has included the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) in a super body that will monitor the food and energy situation in the country.

Escudero said the inclusion of the country's spy agency does not augur well to the volatile situation as its role in the contingency task force might even provoke the already anguished public over the relentless soaring of food and fuel prices.

The senator, who is also chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, said the government should be judicious in using the ISAFP and that should only be confined to help find a cure to the oil price spikes that torment us all.

"I really hope that the government is not tapping ISAFP for a selfish political reason, that is to keep a tab on a patient people's temperament. Because the paranoids among the guilty would like to know until when can empty rice pots remain overturned before the people will start moving to harangue its government for not doing anything about their plight."

"It is the government's responsibility to mitigate the current crisis situation that the country is in, and it is also right to mobilize concerned government agencies, but why include a spy agency? Are we already lacking of civilian government institutions that can be tapped for this particular situation of energy and food crisis?"

"Or is this an admission of this government that the situation is already going out of hand that we need to call in military aid in an economic crisis?"

Escudero said intelligence groups with their huge budgets, are best deployed against criminals who kidnap and rob people, and not on the victims of government inaction over the high prices of oil, rice and other basic goods. He further said the government should not simply watch us carry our heavy load, which is what surveillance can only do, but instead help us carry it, and it can lighten the load for one by reducing the taxes on fuel.

A government that opts for the surveillance of, instead of solutions to the heavy burden on our backs is either ignorant of our hardships, or insensitive to it, or worse, both, Escudero said.

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