Friday, November 14, 2008 Commentary: Fertilizer story is no joke, or is it? By Jun Sula
PARAPHRASING actress Barbra Streisand, fertilizer, like manure, doesn't mean a thing unless you spread it around.
Either Joc-Joc Bolante failed to heed the formula fully or implement it completely. Either way, it explains why he's in a big hole no amount or kind of fertilizer, much less manure, may bail him out of.
Let's look at how he tried to apply the "spread-it" formula.
Records show that a number of congressmen and local executives got from P3 million to P5 million each, if the dubious list is taken at its face value.
Now, that's a lot of fertilizer, especially for Rep. Teddy "Boy" Locsin, who was one of the alleged recipients even if Makati City doesn't have a square inch of farmland.
At P1,000 per bag of fertilizer, P3 million is equivalent to 3,000 bags, If you tie them together lengthwise from end to end, with the bag about a meter long , the bags will reach 3 kilometers. Now if you peg the price at P500 per bag, that would mean 6,000 bags, measuring 6 kilometers from end to end.
But remember, there's such a thing as commission or overpricing or delivery of many kinds.
At 2 bags per hectare, the P3 million worth of fertilizer would have, well, fertilized 1,500 hectares of farmlands, or half the size of the City of San Fernando. Fertilizer, like manure, has effects where applied.
In this case, a 10 percent in production should have been recorded in farmlands where the fertilizer supposedly went. Did the Department of Agriculture notice something unusual after that, apart from the sudden departure of a suspect to the United States?
Now, take the big picture.
The issue is P728-worth of fertilizer. That translates, at the above price, to 728,000 bags or 728 kilometers, a round-trip distance from Manila to Baguio, or one way to Davao or nearby gulf. If you're conservative, the estimates should go up, and the story even taller, in a manner of speaking.
Indeed, the fertilizer story is kilometric, and it takes some very creative, perhaps bigger, cranium to give it the kind of funny stretch it has been given or gone to. Fortunately, the suspect meets this particular criterion.
In the case of a local recipient, the story goes that the P3 million came in kind, loaded in seven trucks and then farmed out to farmers in four towns and one city.
Let's make it clearer with a little math.
At 50 kilos per bag, the 3,000 bags of fertilizer should have weighed 150,000 kilos or 150 metric tons. That means, each of the seven trucks would have carried more or less 21 tons of fertilizer.
Apparently, that is possible, even if that might have violated the law on overloading. But a one-time delivery of the merchandise would have required a big warehouse. Where did they say they store the P3 million worth of stuff? That's another story to verify. High school students can do it.
In the final analysis, however, all it requires to put a sane ending to this bad joke is to produce the list of recipients and verify them. One by one, if need be.
That should not be difficult. There were probably no more than 300,000 recipients of the goods. Now if the Kambilan could produce 220,000 plus signatures for the recall of one supposedly good governor, why can't the government produce a little more to clear or convict one supposedly rascal of a government official on the dock?
But then, again, that should be another story, or a bad joke.
