HOTSPOT
For a lot of friends, the presidential promise to lower the price of rice to ₱20 per kilo was “too good to be true.” I myself was skeptical.
But for a lot of poor and lower middle-class folks, that’s something huge and wonderful. It is a departure from what we have always been told: “Prices have no way to go but up.” With wages practically nailed down to sub-subsistence levels, any attempt to drastically lower rice prices is really a welcome thing. It could also be a signal to farmers – who have not been given adequate attention for a long time – that they might have that attention coming their way.
It seems unimportant to the President to be able to show how his administration would accomplish this feat. What’s important is that he is viewed as a dreamer on the side of consumers and farmers. Meanwhile, when the critics began to ferociously attack the objective of lower prices, they wittingly or unwittingly portrayed themselves as defenders of high rice prices or lacking boldness or concern for consumers.
Perhaps a better response would have been to offer a better deal to both consumers and farmers. Maybe ₱15 per kilo and actually outline the steps how it would be accomplished within a certain time frame. If the President’s plan involves massive importation, then the alternative – enticing to farmers nationwide – would be to promote local production.
This week, the President said he would like to see the country attain rice self-sufficiency once again. The opposition and critics can certainly condemn this on whatever basis, but only at their own peril.
The situation demands that we take a deep dive on rice prices, palay farming, and the root causes of the high rice prices, the loss of rice self-sufficiency, the roles of middlemen, smugglers, and importers, and the adverse impact of rice tarriffication. The farmers’ calls – “presyo ng palay itaas, presyo ng bigas ibaba” – seem contradictory but only if we stay uneducated on the issue. (Clue: Think about the calls in reverse, because that’s the problem they wish to solve.)
Senator Risa Hontiveros is doing a great job exposing and fiscalizing the anomalies behind the sugar situation of the country. She needs our help, and perhaps the best way to help is to study the situation of sugarcane workers, listen to them, and trace the journey of the sugarcane from haciendas to palengke.
The sugar situation cannot end simply with foiling questionable importation and the resurrection of a sugar monopoly. Let’s make sure sugar prices are lower for consumers, and there’s sugar self-sufficiency through land reform and agricultural modernization.
By next month, our representatives led by Edcel Lagman, France Castro, Arlene Brosas, and Raoul Manuel would have to comb through the proposed 2024 budget to be submitted to Congress by the President. They would need a lot of help to fiscalize the budget, especially attacking the non-productive expenditures and advancing the people’s call to address shortages in essential services.
They would surely appreciate help from budget nerds, and also from the public, regardless of political affiliation or voting record, on matters in the budget we think Congress should shine a light on. Support for farmers, the budget for land acquisition, post-agrarian reform services, subsidies for local agricultural production, and the like, down to the regional and provincial levels, could be tackled there.
Perhaps we ourselves hold the antidote to political cynicism and a sense of hopelessness. Democracy demands unending participation, engagement, education, organization, and, yes, activism.
If we do it for the improvement of the situation of consumers, commuters, farmers, and workers, we also make matters better for ourselves.
Perspective and perception matter.