Estrada names poverty as biggest enemy today

Estrada names poverty as biggest enemy today

MANILA (AP): President Joseph Estrada said Saturday that 101
years after Philippine independence from colonial rule, poverty
has replaced foreign invaders as the main enemy.

In an Independence Day message, Estrada urged his countrymen
"to make our forebears proud by proving that we are a people
capable of charting our own destiny."

Estrada, a former popular movie actor who often portrayed
underdog heroes, won last year's presidential election on a pro-
poor platform.

"My goal is to free the Filipino from his enslavement to
poverty," he said.

"Let us help each other to make our country free from poverty,
free from fear and a nation where there is equal opportunity for
everyone to improve their life."

Estrada made the appeal following traditional flag raising
ceremonies on the balcony of the home of revolutionary leader
Emilio Aguinaldo in Kawit town south of Manila.

"Foreign invaders were our enemies in the past. Poverty is our
enemy today," he later said in his weekly radio program that
coincided with the Independence Day festivities.

Estrada's economic planners say 1999 will be the start of the
recovery of the Philippine economy, which was battered by the
Asian financial crisis and then by a severe drought last year.

The government predicts the economy will grow steadily in the
next six years, with average growth in gross domestic product for
the period seen at 4.7 percent to 5.3 percent.

With economic growth will come a substantial drop in the
country's poverty level - from 32 percent in 1997 to 25 percent
to 28 percent by the time Estrada steps down in 2004, economic
planners say.

The financial crisis and the drought worsened income
distribution last year, with the wealthiest 10 percent of
families becoming relatively better off, the National Statistics
Office reported in April.

The top 10 percent received 42.9 percent of all income, up
from 33.9 percent in 1997, according to a poverty survey. The
share of the lowest 10 percent fell from 2.3 percent to 1.2
percent. All other income brackets also declined, the report
said.

Filipino revolutionaries proclaimed independence and
established Asia's first democratic republic on June 12, 1898,
the climax of Asia's first revolution against Western colonial
rule.

The Philippines was a Spanish possession for 333 years, from
1565 to 1898.

Unwilling to hand over power to the Filipino revolutionaries,
Spain ceded the country to the United States for US$20 million in
December 1898.

The following year, hostilities broke out between Filipino
revolutionaries and American forces sent to occupy the new U.S.
colony. The brief but brutal Philippine-American war is
considered by some historians as the "first Vietnam" of the
United States.

The United States formally granted the Philippines
independence in 1946, after a four-year occupation of the country
by the Japanese during World War II.