The recently-passed anti-terrorism law will further support the Arroyo administration’s repressive moves to be able to sustain the illusion of an improving local economy and please foreign and local elite interests. The recently-passed anti-terrorism law will further support the Arroyo administration’s repressive moves to be able to sustain the illusion of an improving local economy and please foreign and local elite interests.

IBON Research Director Antonio Tujan said that the anti-terrorism law may be used to build investor confidence by quelling opposition to Arroyo’s economic policies, at the expense of the people’s civil liberties and human rights.

Tujan said that Arroyo’s hyping of a growing economy may be likened in some degree to the early years of the Marcos dictatorship where economic and political “stability” were imposed through massive repression. This imposition of "stability" plus avid pro-foreign economic policies created the illusion of a healthy economy attractive to investors.

“An anti-terror measure is important in this scenario since it would provide the legal justification for enhanced security moves and intensified attacks on groups that have the capacity to energize opposition to Arroyo’s policies,” he pointed out.

But repression cannot prevent the emergence of the nation’s true economic picture nor the people’s opposition to the administration’s neoliberal policies, corruption, and anti-people policies, said Tujan.

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