Theres The Rub
Dark, darker, darkest
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:25:00 04/03/2008
Filed Under: Politics, Graft & Corruption, International (Foreign)Trade, Agriculture, Poverty
The dark cloud is that we are being led out of our deepest misfortune by the one person most responsible for it.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did not start the policy of relying on the world market rather than embarking on a program of food security to keep Juan de la Cruz reasonably fed. Others did so before her, notably Fidel Ramos, who became president at a time when the socialist world had just crumbled and who reveled in the free-market triumphalism that ensued. He was among the first to embrace unbridled globalism and seemed to be vindicated in doing so until the crippling Asian financial crisis of 1997 struck. After which it looked as if what he had embraced was not a fair lady but one of the looser kind.
It was not Arroyo who started the policy, but it was she who pursued it with the same doggedness with which she has pursued power. She it was in the first place who pushed for the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) in the Senate during the Ramos presidency, or indeed for adopting it over and beyond the call of GATT itself. While the developed countries, like the United States, the European Union, and Japan, continued to intervene to give enormous subsidies to their agriculture, the Philippines was only too glad to obey the order to surrender itself to market forces. By rights Japan should not be producing its own rice under a regime of globalization: Only 15 percent of its land is suitable for cultivation so that by rights, or by the law of comparative advantage, it should be importing it. Yet it continues to produce its own rice by massively subsidizing rice farming and is currently producing surpluses. Its officials might as well say apologetically, “So sorry, food not negotiable, screw globalization.”
Here, with fickle weather and an even fickler government, with farm inputs (seed, fertilizers, pesticides) increasingly getting out of their reach, with traders downright swindling them (not least by declaring part of their produce substandard or spoiled), farmers are no longer able to keep their heads above water. And rather than drown in it, they opt to do things other than farm, chief of them making a beeline for the nearest overseas recruitment office, legal or illegal. Rice lands have fallen dramatically over the last decade or so, and farmers even more so.
Under her specific watch, Arroyo has not just made the Philippines the most corrupt country in Asia, she has made the Philippines the biggest rice importer in Asia. Some say in the whole world: We are currently buying 2.2 million tons abroad every year despite the hugely ironic fact that we host the International Rice Research Institute.
What wasn’t a headache then is so today. Because unlike in the past, we are facing a world that is beset by crises of all shapes and sizes. Not the least of them is falling food production worldwide. For much of the 20th century, food production has outpaced population. That is no longer so today with fossil-fuel exhaustion (high yields depend on oil-based inputs), loss of arable lands and fresh water supplies, environmental degradation, and runaway population growth. Given our own levels of staggering corruption in government, horrendously skewed distribution of wealth (the plethora of cars on the road is not a sign of prosperity, it is a sign of a tiny few having more than the teeming others), and widening poverty despite growth, the specter of hunger truly looms upon the land.
The darker cloud is that we are being led out of our deepest misfortune by the one person we least trust.
We are being led by a person who likes to superimpose an alternate reality on this country, or who likes to put a billboard proclaiming an Enchanted Kingdom on a pigsty. She says Filipinos are tired of “political noise.” All the surveys say Filipinos are tired of her, three out of every five of them saying they do not trust her. (More than that said some years ago they did not believe she won the elections.) She says Filipinos have never had it better over the past 30 years, enjoying as they do today wondrous growth. Even official figures show the dirt-poor have grown from 30 percent to 33 percent of the population. She says her government has gotten rid of corruption. The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy says, “Ha, ha ha, ha, ha!” or a more polite version of it, which is to rank the Philippines the rankest country in Asia for two straight years now.
She has even gotten to the point where she now believes she can superimpose that alternate reality not just on Filipinos but on the world’s businessmen and leaders. I don’t know which is more embarrassing, her declaration in Hong Kong that she has gotten rid of corruption or her declaration at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that she had gotten rid of human rights violations in her country. You’re tempted to believe that in the case of Hong Kong her subtext really was: “You’re Chinese, you thrive on corruption. Surely we can do business?”
I wrote early this year that crisis is like war and that during those times people look up to someone who can inspire them. To a Winston Churchill who can call on the people to shed blood, sweat and tears, and have the clout to be obeyed. To a Franklin D. Roosevelt who can promise a Fair Deal for everyone and have the honesty to be believed. Today, as we face our crisis or war, we have only someone who ... well, there’s another word for “superimposing an alternate reality,” and that is lies.
The darkest cloud is that we are being led out of our deepest misfortune by another Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos was the one most responsible for the anarchy and divisiveness of his time, and he was the one person Filipinos least trusted during his time. Yet he proposed to be this country’s savior, and imposed the idea on us by mounting a dictatorship that lasted for 14 years.
We don’t heed history, we will repeat it.
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