WRITING about politics and extrajudicial killing is like beating a dead horse.
We know that the last thing the government will do is to abet killing and only the lapdogs of the past administration who still nurture the idea that the nation will rise, as in people power, to remove President Duterte will indulge in this hallucination.
I think that even President Duterte is having an overdose of it he is now telling the media to criticize him instead of just dishing out the good and inoffensive stories.
I read that to mean adversarial role.
This is not the first time that Duterte asked media to be critical instead of just saying or writing what would please him. He admonished the press to be critical.
I know where that is coming from. The City Council of Davao for example has become one solid majority group seldom would you hear of any dissenting member that would come to the fore to dissent.
I therefore am taking the challenge. And we could start with the decision of several government agencies to open the importation of rice.
The move is quite simplistic and it would seem that it will be happy days again for the rice importers come 2017.
This agenda is a direct contravention to what Secretary Manny Pinol has been espousing, but what shocked me most is that the Department of Agriculture was part of this scheme.
I only can surmise that there will be a shift from the traditional rice and corn farming to cash crops.
Banana, pineapple and palm oil agricultural crops, to name a few, which falls in this category.
It is not farfetched to hear later that landowners will be able to earn more as contract growers or growers themselves of cash crops than with rice or corn.
Ergo, we simply import rice which, at landed cost, is cheaper than the locally produced. But I cannot help but suspect the hidden agenda here.
It is an undisputed fact that rice trading is dominated by Chinese businessmen.
What happened along the way that suddenly we hear of this impulsive agenda that spells the doom of our farmers? Already, there are quarters who are saying that this is the reward to the Chinese traders who help in Duterte’s presidential campaign. Excuse me.
The president had turned down so many offers to underwrite his campaign and for some quarters in the government bureaucracy to plan to fork out licenses to import rice to the detriment of our farmers is patently unconscionable.
This is merely telling us that somewhere along the way in the course of the Presidential derby, some hotshots must have received contributions with some guarantees of reward. In a way you call that payback time.
The reason given by the conspirators is that locally produced rice is more expensive than imported rice. This is looking at the problem in the eye of the consumers rather than looking at the reasons why.
I will tell you why and I will quote some of the recent statements of Secretary Piñol. After the Marcos regime the agricultural technicians where pulled out from the Department of Agriculture and assigned to the local government units where they became square pegs in round holes.
As a consequence, from being a rice exporter, Philippines became rice importers.
The Philippine National Bank, then owned by the government, was the principal lending institution for farmers.
They had “banks on wheels” that go right into the doorstep of the farmers homes. Together with the Department of Agriculture and PNB personnel taught farmers how to apply for loans and what farm inputs to buy to improve productivity.
As a result, Philippines became rice exporters.
Why cannot this be revived. Remove political vendetta like what the 1st and second administrations of Aquino did and adopt programs of past administrations that were proven to be effective and productive.
PNB had been privatized and now we have Land Bank and Development Bank left.
Land Bank should resuscitate the lending programs for farmers.
And if I may, Mr. President, beware of putting a character on top of Land Bank who has conflict of interest.
One mistake, and you will deplete the liquid assets of the bank and transferred to another private bank which is already bursting on the seams.
Do not blink President Duterte for in just a wink this farmers’ bank will be akin to carcass that the vultures in the banking system will consume to the bone. And the farmers will have nothing left to improve their plight.
My God this is worse than the drug menace.