Show indignation,
join strike – bishop
BY CARLA GOMEZ

Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra yesterday issued a pastoral letter calling on the people to join a nationally coordinated transportation strike Monday and Tuesday.

Navarra called on the people to show their indignation over “the haphazard oil price increases” by joining rally centers at Libertad, Magsaysay, Ramos and Burgos streets in Bacolod City, and in other parts of the Negros Occidental.

“Let us call for immediate government intervention to cushion the impact of oil price increases on basic commodities, seek the scrapping of the 12 percent Reformed Value Added Tax and the Oil Deregulation Law, the reclaiming of control of Petron, and nationalization the oil industry,” he said.

The police will go on full alert starting Sunday, a day ahead of the two-day transport strike from 5 a.m. Monday to 3 p.m. Tuesday in Negros Occidental, to protest the spiraling prices of fuel.

Senior Supt. Rosendo Franco, provincial police director, yesterday ordered police commanders to exercise “maximum tolerance” with protestors, whom he also urged to respect the rights of those who will not join the protest action.

Franco said troopers of the 612nd Provincial Mobile Group will be placed on standby, in case they will be needed by the Bacolod City Police Office and other police units.

ILOILO CITY—With rice and food prices already rising to record levels, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes said the country should now brace itself for rising oil prices that could reach $200 per barrel within the next 24 months.

Reyes said the $200-per-barrel price, which he said would have been dismissed as ridiculous years ago, is now possible, citing Wednesday's forecast of the international investment house Goldman Sachs, that which predicted the $200 price within the next 24 months.

In 2005 the investment house also predicted in 2005 that oil would reach $100 per barrel.