MANILA, Philippines -- Last Tuesday’s Senate hearings, the 12th on the ZTE national broadband network (NBN) issue, lasted over 10 hours, during which allegations and counter-allegations flew between new “surprise witness” Leo San Miguel and three earlier witnesses, namely, his former employee Dante Madriaga, Rodolfo Lozada and Joey de Venecia III. But beyond the exchange very little would stand in a court of law, making many people, including Senators Edgardo Angara, Joker Arroyo and Juan Ponce Enrile, feel it’s time to wind up those hearings, so that the Senate could attend to more pressing issues like the ratification of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement, the need to define once and for all the Philippines’ territorial boundaries before the May 2009 deadline set by the United Nations, and food security.
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The Senate hearings have lost all sense of reason and have turned extremely ugly; the only people who stand to benefit from them are those with presidential/vice presidential ambitions. Then too, the senators who are against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have long condemned her and nothing can be said that can sway them from that. Another reason is that, as National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales noted yesterday, at this point Ms Arroyo is already secure from ouster. Her critics will just have grin and bear that fact and ensure that electoral reforms can be put in place so that we can have credible elections in 2010.
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Last Tuesday was a revelation. If looks could kill, then Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s eyes, slitting in ill-disguised anger, could have slain San Miguel, his “surprise witness.” Did Ms Arroyo’s people get to him in between last Monday evening, when Lacson last met with him, and Tuesday’s hearing? This question was on everyone’s mind. But if the Palace did, San Miguel did the turnabout so expertly; no opposition senator could make him contradict his testimony. Some senators abandoned parliamentary behavior and were frightfully brutal and abusive toward the witness, especially Jinggoy Estrada and Jamby Madrigal. But he had the patience of Job and looked totally collected and unruffled. Except for a lapse or two, he was credible, in contrast to his former employee (Madriaga) who looked lean and hungry.
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My husband and I motored to the University of the Philippines, Los Baños, last week for the centennial ceremonies presided by UP’s first female president, Dr. Emerlinda Roman, and the UP College of Agriculture’s first woman dean, Dr. Candida B. Adalla. My radio program partner, National Commission on Culture and the Arts Executive-Director Cecile Guidote Alvarez was one of four women in the media and the arts who were honored with “gumamela” [hibiscus] hybrids named after them. (The others were the late Betty Go-Belmonte, Domini Torrevillas of The Philippine Star and Cheche Lazaro of ABS-CBN Broadcasting’s “Probe” program.)
Cecile’s friends teased her that the more suitable thing to name after her would be a typhoon or tornado. At any rate, the hibiscus species bred by the Institute of Plant Breeding in our colleagues’ honor were all so lovely.
While in Los Baños, Cecile and I sought out Dr. William Padolina, deputy executive director of the International Rice Research Institute and science secretary during the Ramos presidency, on the rice situation. Earlier, I read that Albay province’s Gov. Joey Salceda, who remains as President Arroyo’s economic adviser, had said the real crisis is not the ZTE or Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU), but food security.
Padolina confirmed that the rice situation, not just in the Philippines but around the world, should be seriously addressed for the simple reason that rice, like oil, is a political commodity. Unfortunately Congress is more engrossed in endless hearings while a real crisis stares us in the face.
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Padolina said that in the history of our country, we reached self-sufficiency in rice only six times—notably in the late 1970s with the Masagana 99 program; most of the time we thrived on rice importation. The average consumption of each Filipino is about 110 kilos of rice a year, he noted. This means we need about 8.5 million metric tons of milled rice per year to feed our population, in addition to maintaining 2 million metric tons of buffer stock for emergencies as required under the Food Security Act.
But unfortunately, many factors have conspired to affect the world stock, so that nations are now faced with the question of whether there’s enough to go around. The World Food Program’s Valerie Guarnerie recently said that rice stocks were at their lowest in 20 years.
There are reports that some rice-exporting countries no longer want to sell. We checked these out with Padolina and he noted that only 6 percent of the total rice produced all over the world, or 30 million metric tons, is traded. Of that total, 90 percent is planted in Asia, but as reports now bear out, China and India, the major producers, are having problems with their rice production, due in part to environmental problems such as massive flooding and global warming.
Padolina explained that a one-degree centigrade increase in nighttime temperature results in a 6 percent decline in rice harvest, which is why the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños seeks to produce “climate-ready” rice (e.g., against drought or excessive rain), in a mitigation and adaptation strategy. (It takes 3,000 kilograms of water per hectare to harvest rice.)
Another factor is our shrinking land: The Philippines has three million “tubigan” [rice field] hectares to feed 89 million Filipinos, versus nine million hectares for 60 million Thais, and seven million hectares for about an equal number of Vietnamese. (Much of the rice lands have given way to golf courses, subdivisions and industrial zones.) Of our three million hectares, only one-third has irrigation facilities (which allow for two or three harvests per year).
Padolina also pointed out that another factor is that many young people around the world no longer want to go into agriculture and that “many of them think food grows out of supermarket shelves.”
