There is no optic more tragic than the current long queues for NFA rice. Housewives, children, grown-up men, pregnant women and senior citizens line up for 3 to 5 kilos of rice at government-accredited retailers, their faces a virtual canvas of desperation and poverty. The sweaty pesos are clutched tightly, the sweat moistening the already-crumpled pesos.
This is in the context, tragically, of a Forbes ranking that said the leading Filipino billionaire is worth $18 billion plus. And that the Filipino dollar billionaires and multi-millionaires, with the same faces and names for as long as we can all remember, have more wealth than the bottom 30 percent, the very same subset of Filipinos in the interminable rice queues.
When was the last time you have seen rice queues that long? Men of a certain age can recall vividly the last time the queues were that long, at least in many parts of Luzon. It was after the Great Floods of the Plains in mid-1972, which was then followed by the double whammy of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, then the declaration of a nationwide martial rule. The long rice queues segued into martial rule. Senior citizens with long memories cannot help but ask: “Will history repeat itself?”
There was mild panic over rice supplies in 1998, after the so-called Great Drought that pushed the Ramos administration to import more than 2 million kilos of rice, a record in our contemporary history. But it was a mild thing. The panic soon passed, and the timely importation of cheap rice prevented a full-blown, rice-induced emergency.
The current queues will not be short-lived. And the geographic spread of the queues is from Batanes to Zamboanga. And not a single region has been spared from the rice emergency.
All this blah blah blah that we have moved up into the world, that we are the best performing economy in the Asian region, and that we are smart technologically and we occupy some weird category as the texting capital of the globe is immediately dashed by the rice queues. It means that food security, the top priority of any country and the number one guarantee of an orderly and functioning society, is a great void. There is both anger and frustration at the queues. “What is a government; what is a leadership,” people at the queues ask, “that can’t even guarantee enough supply of the basic staple for its own people?”
The macro level is not much better. The economic news of today is anything but hopeful. Let us itemize the news
The August inflation is at a nine-year high at 6.4 percent (some say it is 6.6 percent ) and the stark realities of the price surges are on brutal display at the public markets. Vegetables prices are beyond the reach of the lower middle class (P90 per kilo for the low-quality kamatis or tomatoes), and the low-income groups have shifted to their daily fares of cheap noodles, eggs and the cheapest canned goods. The fast-food joints that found their market niches on the promotion of “unli” rice have been forced to walk back on their market-grabbing promo and now offer options of “wan” rice or “unli” rice but for a premium price.
Galungong is now a middle-class fare, and Pete Lacaba’s “paksiw na ayungin“ is no longer offered at the turo-turos. ( I know, that is where I eat when I am in the City.)
Despite the dissembling of Mr. Roque and the others in the communications shop of Mr. Duterte, the brutal impact of the inflation rate on ordinary lives is now the bane of the ordinary Filipinos’ daily existence.
More and more Filipinos are stuck in low-end jobs with very little pay, blared the screaming headline of a business daily friendly to the Duterte administration. The peso may breach the P55 to $1 exchange rate anytime soon, a return to the weak peso regime in 2005-2006. The pump prices of fuel, no thanks to the manipulations of Putin and Company and Mr. Trump’s misguided policy on Iran, is now P44 plus per liter of diesel, the fuel of mass transport and PUVs.
The headlines that state the harsh realities of a troubled economy need damage control, and that logically could come from a President issuing a call to arms. Its central theme is that Filipinos of all political beliefs and stripes should now close ranks and unite behind solid measures to rein in the effects of the current crises — to stabilize the situation via policies determined by a united front.
But instead of that, what we are witnessing is the surreal spectacle of a president determined to frame a legal resort to arrest and detain his leading political critic, Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th. Instead of just leaving Mr. Trillanes alone and his futile critiquing of the administration, President Duterte has unleashed his solicitor general, who amassed multi-million contracts for the security agency he owns while serving as sol-gen, to find the crudest legal resort to silence Mr. Trillanes.
Another fierce critic in the Senate — Sen. Leila de Lima – is in jail. With Trillanes in jail, no one with a big megaphone will be left in the Senate. The other critics are just a bunch of patsies who can be easily dismissed by the President.
The vocal Never-Duterte in the judiciary, Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, was ousted by her colleagues a few months back, also on the initiative of Mr. Duterte, lawyer Larry Gadon and the sol-gen.
So, instead of uniting the nation to find the solutions to its woes, Mr. Duterte wants a top critic in jail. That Mr. Trillanes is holed out in the Senate offices to avoid arrest is the story of the hour, along with the price surges, the rice queues, the P45 per liter diesel price and the general frustration of ordinary Filipinos that now suffer from follies that are economic, or political, or both.
And Ompong has made a lethal landfall, with savagery in its hurricane-class winds and Ondoy-type rains that mostly savage parts of North Luzon.
I am now trying to find a coherent governing framework for such actions and decisions, and for guide, I am now reading Barbara W. Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.
No comments:
Post a Comment