Big problem

FRONTLINE

Ninez Cacho-Olivares

04/11/2008

Global leaders have already warned of massive social unrest in certain countries in Asia, mainly due to the rice crisis in the world, and the Philippines is one of those countries mentioned.

Gloria Arroyo and her Palace aides have been downplaying the rice problem, saying there is nothing to worry about since her government has succeeded in importing rice from neighboring Asian countries, such as Vietnam.

Maybe so, but there is definitely a shortage of cheap rice in this country and the evidence of this are the long lines of people in areas where rice is sold, plus the fact that when Filipinos could easily buy as many kilos as they want of NFA rice, this time, they can only purchase a kilo a day for each family.

Even the church’s parish outlets which under that agreement with the Arroyo government, where the bishops and priests were turned as rice traders, have been complaining that the NFA has only been delivering sacks of rice at lesser quantity. And the priests-traders have been selling two kilos of rice per family, instead of a kilo per family.

Even market stalls selling NFA rice have experienced the long lines of people who want to buy the rice, and have found themselves with no rice left to sell — and this at one kilo per person standing in line under the hot sun. Now Gloria wants NFA rice out of the markets, and that the rice will instead be distributed to the poor. That’s askin for bigger trouble.

But Gloria still insists there is no shortage of rice. Instead, she and her aides now claim that the reason rice goes very fast is that it is now the people who are hoarding rice, in which case, the translation would have to be that the poor have a lot of money to spare, to keep on buying and storing rice—and at a kilo a day.

Can something be so illogical as this?

The poor that have to line up for a kilo of rice can’t obviously be hoarding the staple, for the simple reason that one kilo of rice a day may not even be enough to feed their families, besides which, they neither have that kind of money around to buy rice and hoard it, as they truly live from day to day, with food expenses eating up virtually their soul.

So how can one hoard rice if one buys a kilo a day?

Still, if Gloria insists that there is no rice problem, and no shortage, how does she solve the problem of the coming social unrest when the prices, not just of rice, but essential food, go up sky-high?

Already, Gloria and her NFA have made it known that there will be increases in the price of NFA rice, with the rice agency now saying that selling NFA rice at the current price of some P18 per kilo has caused the agency big losses, as the price of rice is being subsidized. Still, with the global market price of rice nearing $1000 per metric ton, prices of NFA rice will be doubled, and the Filipino poor can hardly afford to buy that rice at that price, which will mean tightening their belts further for some, but going hungry for many.

It isn’t just the rice prices that have gone up, that’s for sure. Already, the price of bread, pork, chicken and beef has gone up. It can of course be said that the poorest of the poor, probably don’t even know the taste of pork, chicken and beef, having been too poor to even afford this stuff, but with the poor deprived of the amount of rice they stuff themselves with to get by daily, and will be deprived even more when NFA rice gets to sell at a much, much higher rate, what do Gloria and her financially overstuffed cabal do when the Filipino people start moving on their own and take what they want, by way of rioting?

Send the police and military to shoot down the rioters, a lot of whom will be their relatives who have to survive?

In all probability, the crime rate will zoom in the coming months, precisely because when there is no more money or food for the poor for their survival, the only other way to get what they need will have to be through criminality, such as stealing and even killing for food to feed the family.

The law is hardly going to be a hindrance to the desperate. It never is.

But Gloria and her regime are to blame for today’s rice situation. Agricultural funds which should have gone to assist the farmers, never went to them. Instead, they went into the campaign kitty of Gloria and her senators and congressmen.

She never bothered to look far enough for the country to be self-sufficient in rice, to get the irrigation projects going, opting instead to import more and more rice, since there was always oodles of money to be made in importation, and of course smuggling.

Their eye was always on money to be made. Now she faces this great problem which will hardly go away with claims of putting rice on the table instead of politics.

It is the politics of rice that may yet kick her out of Malacañang.

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