‘What connection does Lacson’s persecution have to do with the NFA?’
LET me use this space to thank all those who sent text messages, called up or wrote by e-mail to congratulate me on the occasion of my appointment by President Aquino to the post of Administrator of the National Food Authority.
I am heartened by the expressions of support, especially since the NFA which I inherited has huge financial obligations, which ballooned seven-fold in the last seven years of the Arroyo administration.
People who are shocked at the numbers of NFA indebtedness should however know that the mandate of the agency is not to produce black ink at the bottom line, as it was established for a two-fold subsidy role. One, to serve as a market mechanism to ensure that the palay and corn farmers are not at the total mercy of middlemen who take advantage of their lack of capital and urgency to sell for their livelihood. And two, which makes the financial operations even more difficult, we must try to achieve price stability, apart from supply stability, to the consuming public. NFA is not a profit center; it is a prime service center for the most basic of food staples.
This is not to say that things have been hunky-dory in the organization which I began to head since July 8. Our warehouses are presently over-flowing because of extremely heavy rice importations done in the past three years. This was an offshoot of the world-wide rice crisis when the Philippines found itself the largest importer of rice in the world, not at all something the Arroyo regime can be proud of. But, hunger had to be staved, and over-reaction or not, the situation, though slightly improved, remains a gargantuan task of producing enough to sustain our consumption of the grain.
Still, I have much more to learn, much more to analyze, many places in the country to visit, much more figures and documents to study. Marketing rice for more than 90 million consumers is far removed from my business in the late 70’s of fruit marketing, where I used to contract the produce of Davao farms, later Laguna and even Mindoro, and supply these wholesale to the Metro Manila market. The areas of operation may be the same --- buying, warehousing, transporting, handling, and selling, but the difference, apart from awesome volumes, is that fruits, the ones I sold especially, cater to the rich; rice is for everyone, and subsidized rice is for the poor.
One of those who did not know whether to congratulate me or to commiserate with the difficult responsibilities I shall forthwith undertake, was our publisher, boss Jake Macasaet, himself a gentleman farmer of fruits and vegetables in balmy Lipa. He asked me not to give up writing in this space, as did my immediate superior, Secretary Procy Alcala of the Department of Agriculture. But the load may be too heavy, and I may have to write more sparsely, and perhaps with much less political color.
Let me straighten certain rather unseemly comments aired in broadcast media, a few in print, regarding the coincidence of my having been appointed by President Noynoy to NFA at about the same time as my good friend Atty. Magtanggol Gatdula, retired police general whose sterling record in the PNP would make him a very effective head of the National Bureau of Investigation. Because both of us happen to be confidantes of Senator Panfilo M. Lacson, who deliberately refused to face an unjustly-issued warrant of arrest issued by a transactional judge now appointed to the Court of Appeals by the queen of transactional governance, some quarters have slanted their reportage on simple appointments to political payback in favor of someone who was unable to help in the campaign for change and good governance personified by President Noynoy.
While I can understand the connection insofar as the NBI is concerned, what connection does Lacson’s persecution have to do with the NFA? Would I, as friend, give free rice to him if and when he is detained by the NBI? In any event, Lacson’s case is with the trial courts, not even with the DOJ under whose previous watch a clear abuse of prosecutorial powers was unleashed against the most dedicated political enemy of the Arroyos.
Still and all, I see a possible connection. The NFA is plagued by corruption, a disease not particular to it, but to the entire bureaucracy, judicial, legislative and executive, national as well as local, as it is to society itself, even religious institutions. And Panfilo M. Lacson is nemesis to corruption. I am privileged to have helped him in his lonely crusades. I am proud of that, as I am of being his friend.
There are those who scourge him on the altar of supposed human rights violations, but as far as the NFA is concerned, human rights is not an issue. It is corruption, mostly inflicted by orders of those who made Malacañang stink more than the river beside it which is at the least getting cleaned up by civil society efforts.
And perhaps in the near future, another friend of Lacson, NBI’s Gatdula would be conscripted by customs officialdom to assist them in battling the rampant smuggling of oil, of textiles, of comestibles, and yes…rice.
LITO BANAYO
MALAYA Column for Tuesday, 13 July 2010
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