Up to the final moments before President Aquino III signed into law the sin tax reform bill, more than 3,000 militant workers marched and held a protest action at Mendiola Bridge to denounce the Chief Executive and the regressive tax measure.
The militants asserted that the moment Aquino placed his signature on the bill, he has already committed the greatest injustice to the Filipino nation since coming into power in 2010.
The militants denounced the President for the additional burden the Filipino people will bear because the regressive and pass-on nature of the said law.
According to Gie Relova, secretary-general of the militant Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, National Capital Region-Rizal (BMP-NCRR), “the Aquino government has time and again manifested its cruelty and shameless voracity to squeeze the poor of their hard-earned earnings to feed their insatiable caprices and extravagant lifestyles.”
Relova said  “that for as long as the government allows cheap contractual labor and starvation wages to dominate the president’s labor policy, he has no right to impose a new tax measure upon the already struggling Filipino workers and farmers.”
The BMP believes that in order for the taxation system to be fair and equitable as prescribed by the 1987 Constitution, it must be based on one’s income and property.
The sin tax reform law of the Palace is clearly the opposite, it is unjust and regressive therefore, unconstitutional, Relova said.
Relova insisted that “not only is the taxation system flawed, the process of which the sin tax reform law was legislated is also a mere reflection of how the whole process of law-making in the country from its crafting to the plenary deliberations, up to its ratification is riddled with wheeling and dealing and horse-trading between the politicians and the powerful corporate lobbyists.”
Meanwhile, Anthony Barnedo, secretary-general of the Kongreso ng Pagkakaisa ng Maralitang Lungsod-National Capital Region-Rizal (KPML-NCRR) said they don’t have to wait for smuggling or even petty crime statistics to rise in order to know that an illegal law has been enacted.
He said corruption emanated from the onset of the lawmaking process of the sin tax reform law because it was founded on corrupt and malicious intentions.
“The undisputed intents of the sin tax reform law was to facilitate the entry and expand the market share of a large foreign company at the expense of our tobacco farmers and cigarette factory workers. Also, it was intended to compensate the international financial agencies for raising the credit ratings of the country, of which again does not benefit our peasant and workers but only the bankers and speculators”, Barnedo articulated.
The Peoples Coalition Against Regressive Taxation (PCART) declared that the Malacañang-masterminded sin tax reform law is clearly a compromise and a conspiratorial effort by the factions of elite to extract both taxes and profits at the expense of the poor through the legalization of an abusive and regressive tax measure.