A loyal friend speaks! Rice Liberalization Law: Failure, Serious Blunder

With 10 months left in the 6-year-term of President Rodrigo Duterte, I could claim with confidence and certainty that I had remained as his loyal friend, supporter and worker.

As a member of the original group which worked for his Presidency as early as 2013, I am proud to declare that I had adhered to his directive for us members of his official family to steer away from corruption and questionable government transactions.

In fact, I am one of the few members of his official family who, in the face of rumors of involvement in corruption, volunteered to submit to a lifestyle check by the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission which, after a 7-month probe, cleared me of any wrongdoing.

My financial standing now and bank accounts will further prove that.

I also proudly declare that I really worked hard. I took whatever assignment was given to me and worked on it without expecting the President to pat me on the back.

But I have a weakness, if you would call it such. I am a maverick and a non-conformist. I speak my mind and I openly questioned policies which I believed were wrong.

I fought against the Rice Tariffication Law during its crafting and brought farmer-leaders to Malacañang before losing out to the powerful Economic Team led by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez.

In a ceremony for the distribution of land titles to former radical farmers in Sagay, Negros Occidental, I whispered to the President my opposition to allow sugar imports to flood the market because liberalizing the sugar industry would kill the dreams of the former radical farmers for a better life and drive them back to the mountains.

I criticized the Department of Agriculture’s handling of the African Swine Fever outbreak for which I was summoned by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, including the handling of the COVID 19 pandemic.

In fact, before I stepped down as Secretary of Agriculture, I and Dominguez had a heated exchange in front of the President for which I apologized to President Duterte.

That started the sowing of intrigues that I was involved in corruption and when the PACC clearance proved otherwise, they said I was incompetent and that I would pull down the popularity of the President towards the homestretch.

I volunteered to step down as Agriculture Secretary to free the President from the burden of having to choose between his “kumpare” and his gradeschool classmate, who is the main architect of his economic policies.

So, I moved from a Department with a P60-B annual budget to a small agency with an operating budget of only P180-M but that did not change my work attitude or my loyalty to the President.

Why am I laying down these predicates?

It is because I am going to bring back the issue which led me to a head-on confrontation with Sec. Dominguez which eventually led to my departure from the Department of Agriculture – the Rice Liberalization or the Rice Tariffication Law.

The Economic Managers pushed for the opening of the Philippine Rice Market to unimpeded importation and emasculated the National Food Authority by reducing it into a buffer stocking agency.

They convinced the President that this would ensure sufficient rice supply for the Filipino consumers, improve the farmers competitiveness and reduce the price of rice in the market by at least P7 per kilo.

Indeed, the supply is overflowing with importers bringing in more than what the local market could absorb plunging the farm gate prices of local palay from a high of P22 up until the last quarter of 2018 to only P12 to P14 in many areas today.

Worse, the prices of rice in the market had gone up by about P3 to P5 per kilo.

Why did this happen?

Well, our problem basically is the fact that most of our Economic Managers rely on mathematical computations and market assumptions.

“Flood the market with imported rice and the prices will go down benifiting 105-million consumers,” they said, forgetting that the powerful rice businessmen could gain full control of the supply and manipulate the prices, which is what actually is happening right now.

With farmers complaining of very low farm gate prices and soaring costs of farm inputs, the RTL is going to be a major political issue.

The RTL, which the Economic Managers had proudly advertised as the greatest economic legislative achievement of this administration, has in fact proven to be a poison fruit.

With 10 months left and two more harvests expected before May 2022, something must be done about the RTL.

This advice comes from a true and real friend.

#RealFriendsTellTheTruth!

(Photo shows prices of rice in the market which jumped from P34 to P40 per kilo before the artificial “rice crisis” in 2018 to the current prices today which breach P50 per kilo.)