Focusing real issues

Focusing real issues.

(Herman Tiu Laurel/ DieHard III/ Tribune column for 6-25-2014 Wednesday)

 

              The mainstream media (MSM) obsession and treatment of the “pork barrel” issue has really become a joke, focusing on the shallow drama of mug shots and Spartan living conditions of the first celebrity detainee while urgent issues like the rice price crisis are given passing glances. Politicians have been worse. Miriam Santiago shrieked that detention facilities should not be turned into a “private resort”. The lady is not lily white and may find herself someday in the same prison situation, denied ceiling to floor padding. BS Aquino too, when his time comes to stay in a cell he will certainly be denied his play station.

 

              What are the more urgent issues? One is Atty. Alan Paguia’s crusade to put “Hello Garci” back on the public’s agenda. The Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes says a statute of limitations has buried. Atty. Paguia has filed a second motion with the Comelec Legal Department to his first in 2007 which was never answered by the Comelec. The crimes in the “Hello Garci” case is incontrovertible because of  evidence provided by the recordings of the incriminating conversations between Commissioner Garcillano and then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and the latters’ “I am sorry” TV confession. Public accountability in the country is farce until this case is resolved.

 

              Rice prices shot up this month and all Malacañang could say was the disingenuous line that the administration’s anti-smuggling campaign must be causing the price spike. It does not explain anything, instead it betrays the administration’s utter incompetence and lack of coordination. The fact is its caught unprepared and a shortage ensued. They should have prepared local production or legally imported supply to maintain the normal stock and price levels. It was a rice price spike that spelled the doom for Fidel V. Ramos’ “Philippines 2020” in 1997. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had a longer rice crisis,  2008 to 2010. Rice self-sufficiency and price affordability is the topmost priority of the nation.

 

              Garlic prices shot up fourfold last week. Supermarket shelves are empty of it. Some attribute it to price manipulation by traders. The government again claimed that its intensified monitoring of garlic smuggling may be the reason. That stinks. If government planned a crackdown on smuggled garlic they should also have expected a tightening of supply and took action to increase production in anticipation. Given the high unemployment figures in the agricultural sector a “two birds with one stone” solution should have been foreseen in the garlic situation, expand land areas dedicated to growing garlic and mobilization of idle farm family hands to grow and process the harvest.

 

              Anticipating and avoiding crises like the rice and garlic supply slumps is a fundamental government mission, BS Aquino should have focused on such tasks Day One of his administration in 2010. Medium term planning and day-to-day coordination among the numerous government agencies, and orchestrating legislative support is esential. But BS Aquino concentrated on morality plays, his “no wang-wang” and “tuwid na daan”, instead of getting his cabinet to roll up sleeves and pants’ legs, get into the rice paddies, dig irrigation canals and till vegetable patches with the farmers. Now, the country today is in deep trouble with shortages of the most basic staples.

 

              Agricultural problems require two to three years to solve, in agricultural time has run out on BS Aquino. Among the many crises there is one area where immediate decisions can bring immediate improvement – the fruitless and self-defeating foreign policy direction BS Aquino government has been dragged into on the South China Sea dispute with China. For three years the Philippines has taken an adversarial, no-dialogue, litigious stance which has not gained a single new islet of territory for the country but instead has lost/atoll after islands/stools to punitive occupations of disputed sea formations by China.

 

              The litigious policy with China has proven a totally bankrupt. It is based on the equally bankrupt thesis that the U.S. will honor its “ironclad” promise to back the Philippines. Philippine intransigence allowed China the excuse to occupy and develop the most strategic Mabini or Johnson Reef which pro-U.S. Filipino politician Roilo Golez said is a “game changer”. That neutralizes whatever strategic gain the U.S. hoped for in the EDCA with the Philippines. Aquino can change all these, by a stroke of a pen appointing a new, independent minded Foreign Affairs secretary Aquino can start productive dialogue and earns billions in joint development projects with China.

 

              The idealistic “pork barrel” narrative has become a soap opera. After eleven months, it still is news - but not headline news. The MSM and the ruling powers clearly want it to be the central news to prevent the nation from focusing on the real problems and solutions. The real, alternative media should persist in bringing the real issues to the fore. (1098AM, DWAD 5-6pm Tues. to Fri.; GNN Talk New TV program on June 14, Sat. 8pm and Sun. 8am on Destiny Cable chn. 8 and SkyCable chn. 213 or www.gnntv-asia.com. or YouTube Talk News TV and add date; visit www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com) ###

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