The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) strongly support our jeepney drivers, operators, and transport workers launching a nationwide transport strike this 19-20 March 2026. We recognize this strike as a legitimate assertion of the people’s right to survive against state abandonment of its duty to ensure the people’s welfare amidst crisis situations, leaving no one behind. We call out on the Philippine government for acting instead as a vanguard of corporate interests.
The projection of diesel prices reaching ₱120 per liter is nothing short of economic violence, facilitated by the regressive TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) Law which has turned excise taxes into a tool that disproportionately takes wealth from the poor.
For thousands of drivers, every liter of fuel consumed is a meal snatched from the mouths of their families. When an honest day’s work results in mounting debt and starvation wages, the right to a dignified life is under direct assault by a system that prioritizes revenue collection over human survival.
This crisis cannot be separated from the broader international context. Escalating geopolitical tensions and wars waged and fueled by the United States and its allies continues to destabilize global oil markets and drive fuel prices upward. While multinational oil corporations reap windfall profits from these crises, countries like the Philippines—whose government remains subservient to US foreign and military interests—are left to absorb the economic shocks. The Filipino people are being forced to pay the price for wars and conflicts that serve imperial power and corporate profit, not the interests of ordinary people.
At home, this crisis is the result of bureaucrat capitalism, where state officials act as facilitators for foreign monopolies and local compradors. The government has ensured that oil corporations led by the “Big Three”—Petron, Shell, and Caltex–remain protected, leaving the working class to absorb every global shock. The Oil Deregulation Law (RA 8479) remains the primary instrument of this plunder, stripping the state of the ability to regulate fuel prices while guaranteeing massive profits for oil corporations.
The transport strike proves that when the wheels of the economy are used to grind the poor, the people have every right to bring them to a halt. Through this collective action, transport workers expose the injustice of a system that forces them to shoulder the costs of both global conflicts and domestic policy failures.
CPDG calls on all sectors of society to stand firmly with transport workers and commuters in demanding immediate relief and structural reforms. The struggle for affordable transport, dignified livelihoods, and economic justice is inseparable from the broader fight against corporate greed, state neglect, and imperialist aggression.
For when the engines of protest roar, they carry the collective voice of a people who will no longer be silenced by state indifference and corporate tyranny.
CPDG supports the following calls and recommendations:
- Repeal the TRAIN Law, instead, legislate a Wealth Tax law.
- Repeal the Oil Deregulation Law, instead, the government should regulate the industry to prevent corporate abuse and plunder.
- Roll back oil prices.
- Suspend excise tax and value added tax on oil and basic goods and services.
- Legislate the Family Living Wage of Php1,200.00.
- Nationalize the oil industry.
- End imperialist wars.