Shut Up, Bill Luz!
MBC’s Bill Luz Should Just Shut Up If He Has Nothing Sensible and
Useful to Say
By No to War, Yes to Peace Coalition
The Makati Business Club (MBC)’s executive director Guillermo “Bill”
Luz says that boycotting US products and businesses as protest
against the US agression in Iraq will harm the Philipine economy and
Filipino workers and consumers. We say this is plain bull.
A boycott of US products and business establishment will certainly
harm business, that is US products and business establishments. That
is precisely the intention of the boycott.
Regarding the overall Philippine economy, a boycott of US products
cannot harm it more than the US attack on Iraq and Gloria Macapagal-
Arroyo’s cowardly support for it has already greatly harmed the
domestic and global economy.
The US companies that are targets of the boycott actually employ a
miniscule proportion of the labor force. If Bill Luz does not know
it yet, the great majority of Filipinos work in small and informal
businesses that benefit little from the supposed employment benefits
of US capital. Thus any labor displacement due to the boycott will
be minimal and will be compensated by the political and moral gains
of the boycott if it can contribute to the global efforts to
immediately stop the war. We too are Filipino workers and consumers
and we are prepared to pay the sacrifice. But we do not need the
crocodile tears of a Bill Luz and the MBC to tell us of the pains
which anyway we are already suffering because of the savage war the
US is now waging against Iraq.
The world is not only made up of US products and businesses. There
ARE Filipino products and businesses as well as foreign NON-American
products and businesses that we can patronize. A boycott does not
mean we all have to starve or stop living.
If MBC and Bill Luz were really after the welfare of Filipinos and
the Philippine economy, they should have strongly registered their
objections to the patently illegal and unjust US aggression against
Iraq months before and joined forces with the millions opposing the
war worldwide. They should have immediately and loudly criticized
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s pronouncements and policies on the US
machinations against Iraq and on the government’s bombings of MILF
positions in Mindanao as soon as she had made them. But no, the MBC
chose to remain silent, because it actually supports these
positions. The MBC and Bill Luz are warmongers by default.
Of course, we do not expect the Makati Business Club and its
executive director to support the call for boycott. After all, the
MBC is a club that includes precisely those US companies that are
the targets of the boycott.
But to claim that MBC represents the interests of Filipino workers,
consumers and businesses is a gross misrepresentation which we
reject. Bill Luz is shedding crocodile tears over the Philippine
economy. Even he will not dispute that he is after the profits
first of the US companies that are members of the MBC before
anything else. So he should just shut up if he has nothing sensible
and useful to say.
We say, “Stop the war! Boycott US products!”
