Saturday, May 10, 2008 Speakout: We told you so By BenCyrus G. Ellorin Speak Out
(A quick look and reflection at the crises we are into now)
Reading the speech of Sen. Edgardo Angara in the 16th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in New York lately made me wipe my eyeglasses to check if I was reading right or was just imagining things after three days of subsisting on sab-a, a banana variety which is best eaten boiled or in your beloved banana Q (tastes like rice -- excuse my poetic license hehe).
The good senator sounded like Walden Bello or the likes of Satur Ocampo belaboring a point against agriculture deregulation and against the ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- Uruguay Round, which is the father of the World Trade Organization in the 1990s.
"Once a net exporter of agricultural products, the Philippines' accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) slowed down exports and accelerated imports," bewailed the good senator before the UN Commission that is primarily tasked to promote a kind of development that "meets the needs of the present generation without sacrificing the capacity of the next generation to meet their own needs" -- the definition of the United Nations of sustainable development.
Exactly, what is happening now is a result of generations of wrong development direction, growth at all cost economy, throw away culture, and most importantly by decisions political leaders made that were myopic or limited to their short term political interests.
I was a student activist writing in frantic strokes and shouting to high heavens against the ratification of the GATT-WTO by the Senate of the Republic of the Philippines. We warned of scenario that would further push farmers to poverty and powerlessness and high food prices, but we were just young "leftist-idealist" then that were better ignored while government and neo-liberal economy apologists donning doctorate degrees make rosy presentations and enjoy their thrones in government, as cabinet secretaries, congressmen, senators and yes Presidents.
Avid apologists of the fundamentally flawed neo-liberal economic paradigm had promised that under the WTO, the country would be enjoying PhP3.4-billion net agricultural export earnings and half a million new jobs in agriculture a year.
It turned out to be rude awakening for the Filipinos when in 1994 onwards according to data from the Bureau of Agriculture Statistics; we have been registering negative balance of trade in agriculture, meaning we are importing more than we are exporting. Simply put we are spending more for our domestic consumption from export expenditures than we are earning from import receipts.
In 1993 we have a balance of trade surplus in agriculture of U$292.05-million, in 1994 it has been a downward spiral, from negative U$42.24-million to negative U$ 1,114.00 in 1999, and so on and so forth that we are now being resigned to eating saging, camote, bulanghoy and lutya for staples (my apologies to these nutritious but humble staples).
Sen. Angara attributes these to the GATT Uruguay Round that gave birth to the World Trade Organization.
"Such inequities stem from substantial protectionism in rich countries, as well as from inequities introduced as part of the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture," the Senator was quoted as saying in the UNCSD.
The first solution, according to Angara, is for rich countries to remove export subsidies and reduce domestic subsidies.
While I do certainly agree to Sen. Angara's yakking in the UNCSD and in his overall analysis to the rice and agriculture crises in the country, it certainly is a queer situation that those who promised us heaven got burned in hell as a result of their wrong political decisions and are now crying foul.
The only difference is that while they still enjoy the pulpit of power and all its attendant luxuries, the people are truly experiencing the impact of their wrong decisions. The people, the Filipinos, where theoretically all political power emanates from (based on the republican doctrine where our government system is founded on) are now the once going mad, getting hungry and dying to get cheap government subsidized rice.
Even the present occupant of Malacanang is guilty of this. While her declaration that the Philippines should move towards rice self sufficiency, when she was head of the Dept. of Trade and Industry, the department championed the conversion of ricelands to American-style subdivisions and world class golf courses at a time when Vietnam which has almost the same land area as us, was sending their scholars to UP Los Banos and yes here in Searsolin of the Xavier University of College of Agriculture and still recovering from its civil war and war against the US of A, was decreeing to protect all their rice producing lands from land or crop conversion.
When she was Senator, she was the main sponsor of the Senate Bill for the ratification of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade.
The result is so stark, Vietnam is now among the top two rice exporting countries in the world and the Philippines among the top two rice importing countries the whole world over. DUH!
(The writer is an environmentalist and NGO worker. He has a seat in the Phil. Council for Sustainable Development representing the Civil Society as Co-chair for Peoples Organization of the (Phil) Civil Society Counterpart Council for Sustainable Development. He was Vice President for Mindanao of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines in 1994-96. Comments can be sent to bency@journalist.com.)
(May 10, 2008 issue) Write letter to the editor. Click here.
