S1L2 – NEA’s red-tagging strategy will backfire and spook the business community
Everyone in Baguio should be alarmed by the red-tagging strategy that NEA has unwisely decided to include in its arsenal of weapons against BENECO.
The business community, in particular, should be very concerned. In a recent religious gathering attended by NEA sympathizers, the brazen allegation was made publicly for the first time that BENECO was paying “revolutionary taxes” to the NPA.
Seriously?
Revolutionary tax collection in Baguio City would imply that the nation’s summer capital is now under NPA control. I wonder if responsible people cleared it first with Malacañan before countenancing the spread of loose talk like that, just to villainize BENECO.
The sudden classification of Baguio as rebel territory, true or not, has deadly serious implications. If a Baguio businessman were to receive a “revolutionary tax assessment” letter today, even as a complete prank, that businessman would put his personal safety and that of his family as his most primordial concern. It’s one thing if the scare talk was coming from mere speculating kibitzers. But if prominent interlopers purporting to represent a government agency are the ones gaslighting the rumor, that businessman would think there must be a grain of truth to it. No one can blame him for putting prudence over valor. He will fork up the money and tell his other businessmen friends their turn will come.
Imagine the climate of fear that would create in the business community. More than that, imagine its effect on the pricing mechanism for goods and services in this city if revolutionary tax was to be included as a built-in component of overhead costs of business.
This is the rub: unless NEA is stopped dead on its tracks and squarely told to drop this we-are-government-regulators-we-can-do-anything-we-want shenanigan, they will not only destroy BENECO but ruin all businesses in Baguio along with it.
Predawn blitzkriez didn’t work, bribing media is bringing little returns, scaring local banks backfired, printing bootleg receipts yielded paltry illegal collection, unleashing troll armies proved futile—the poor trolls couldn’t keep up with the torrent of MCO social media posts, many of it much too sophisticated to fake–absolutely nothing is working for the NEA invasion team.
And now the Senate is poised to subpoena them all. Nothing is working at all, you cannot imagine the amount of frustration and desperation they must be at.
Or perhaps you can. This red-ink squirting strategy must be pretty close to the last resort. It’s sending a message that NEA is prepared to burn down the house if necessary to flush everyone out.
It’s no longer enough for NEA just to deny it has anything to do with a strategy that clearly only they would benefit from. They have to go one step further and castigate their people by name who thought up this stupid idea of redtagging MCO’s.
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”