A thousand and one thieves

Scientists called it “the tree of 999 uses” (including for food, roofing, even toothpicks). President Aquino presented the coconut’s 1,000th use as export jackpot in his State of the Nation Address. The Philippines sold 16.7 million liters of coconut water last year.

“Why are the stars all going coconut about this now popular sport’s drink?” asked Jill Foster of UK’s Daily Mail. “Gwyneth Paltrow says drinking it as an ‘on-the-go snack’ helps keep her slim. Madonna bought a company that makes it. Hollywood stars Demi Moore and Matthew McConaughey are devotees.”

Nutrition coach John Berardi repeats what scientists stress: “Each serving has four to five times less sugar compared with cola or fruit juice. It’s a good source of Vitamins C and B, plus protein, calcium, iron, manganese, magnesium. There’s also nutrients called cytokinins. Some say it slows aging, even whittles risk of cancer.”

Thus, “coco water is taking off as the post-exercise drink of choice with ordinary mortals,” Foster adds. One UK firm reported “a 600-percent jump in sales in 12 weeks.”

Here, the coconut towers in 68 of 79 provinces and sprawls over 27 percent of agricultural land. Coco water sales topped $11.2 million in the first six months of this year. That’s double what we marketed last year.

The Department of Agriculture is proposing a 47-percent hike for coconuts in its 2013 budget, Secretary Proceso Alcala reveals. That’d tap the growing demand also for virgin coconut oil and coconut sap sugar.

If used well, that cash infusion can boost what is emerging as the thousand and one uses of the coconut.

“Coconut oil attacks bacteria behind tooth decay,” scientists from Ireland’s Athlone Institute of Technology, told a Society for General Microbiology conference at the University of Warwick. It may anchor a 21st-century spread of new dental products.

“Our data [has] implications on how bacteria colonize cells lining the digestive tract and [affect] overall gut health,” adds AIT’s Damien Brady. Today’s germs increasingly beat back antibiotics. “We [must] turn our attention to new ways to combat microbial infection.”

Athlone researchers compared the impact of oil from coconut, vegetables and olives, in their natural states and when treated with enzyme. The latter resembles human digestion. “Only  enzyme-modified coconut oil inhibited the growth of most bacteria,” British Broadcasting Corp. reported. “It attacked streptococcus mutans, an acid-producing bacterium which ravages teeth.”

The last National Oral Health Survey we skimmed reported that nine out of 10 Grade I students here suffered from tooth decay. Among Grade VI students, the rate was 82 percent. This problem undergirds the government’s effort to tap into the coconut. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,” the philosopher Seneca wrote.

A thousand and one thieves, however, crippled the coconut industry here. Look at the track record.

Presidential Decree 276 ruled that the coconut levy fund was owned by cronies “in their private capacities.” By a stroke of a dictator’s pen, taxes morphed into individual loot. If PD 276 is not scrubbed as unconstitutional, “Marcos found a legal way to steal,” wrote then columnist Antonio Carpio, now senior associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Under Ferdinand Marcos, the Floirendos got bananas and Roberto Benedicto oversaw sugar. Eduardo Cojuangco emerged as the coconut czar. Cojuangco’s party tried—but failed—to impeach Chief Justice Hilario Davide after the Supreme Court declared the coconut levy as public funds. Erap’s cronies slurped into the levy.

Thanks to Arroyo justices in today’s Supreme Court, Cojuangco got to keep 16.2 million San Miguel Corp. shares, bought with funds chipped in by small farmers. The high court issued on March 16 an “entry of judgment”: Cojuangco’s P56.3-billion SMC shares are now “final.” Thus, blank SMC stock certificates, abandoned in a Malacañang vault when Marcos scrammed for Hawaii exile, “legally” belong to Cojuangco.

“Joke of the century,” snapped then Associate Justice and now Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales. Cojuangco “used for his personal benefit the very same funds entrusted to him.” Cojuangco’s stake in SMC was “built on the sweat of coconut farmers,” now Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno wrote. “Prescription, laches or estoppel will not bar future action to recover unlawfully acquired property by public officials or dummies.”

Seven associate justices didn’t attend the first meeting presided over by Sereno, the Inquirer reported. The majority of the justices were apparently questioning Sereno’s capability and experience to lead the judiciary. Fine. This is a free country.

But how many of those no-shows voted for the “joke of the century” in the coconut levy? A judicial robe does not disguise hypocrisy. Embroidered phylacteries didn’t spare the Pharisees from denunciation by the Master. “An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.”

Scientist Jurgenne Primavera, in her book on coastal flora, wrote: “Ownership and control of coco levy funds shifted over 40 years under four presidents.” It swung “from presidential associates (coco levy cronies) during martial law to government by sequestration (after People Power).” Farmers were favored through Davide Court decisions, and then “back to presidential associates with negotiated settlements.” The disgraced Corona Court winked at Cojuangco pocketing the small coconut farmers’ levies.

“How did … P150 billion from half a million farmers end up in the pockets of so few?” Primavera  wondered. It happens when a thousand and one thieves are on the loose.

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