So Be It

Many of us may recoil at the thought of yet another Senate investigation especially since there never seems to be any closure to any of the Senate inquiries into government wrongdoing. But we must brace ourselves for yet another. Again. 

The Senate should promptly look into the controversy that has surrounded the $2 billion shipyard that Hanjin is building inside the PHIVIDEC in Tagoloan. The mayor of Tagoloan is crying bribery; Hanjin is saying extortion. If only to get at the truth of the matter, the Senate should launch a formal investigation pronto. 

From where I am sitting, it is inevitable that a project of such magnitude will be mired in controversy. A project involving billions of dollars is naturally a magnet for people, inside as well as outside government, out to make a fast buck. And the process, it seems, leaves a lot of opportunities for predators to make a killing. 

I am wondering, for instance, why a particularly big investor such as Hanjin would have to deal with a lot of government institutions, from the national level down to the baranggay, instead of dealing with a minimum number of government offices. We work really hard to woo businesses into investing and then we make them go through a lot of trouble before they can actually do business here. I mean, that is one of the biggest frustrations of businessmen in this country—the many many permits you have to get and, it goes without saying but I will say it anyway, the many many palms you have to grease before you even begin to think about finally setting up shop. Or, with the right connections, set up shop and let “S.O.P.” do what it does—areglo. 

I am not saying that Hanjin is without fault especially since they have recently been embroiled in another controversy for building condominiums right in the middle of the forest apparently without first obtaining an ECC. But is it not supposed to be the role of PHIVIDEC as the industrial estate administrator to make sure that every permit has been complied with and that no Philippine law is broken? Is it not the role of PHIVIDEC to coordinate with LGUs?  

What I am driving at is simple— pare down the process of doing business in this country to the barest minimum, with the least government contact as possible, and you minimize the opportunities for corruption. We all know how bad corruption is in this country. We are in fact one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  

The problem lies in the fact that businesses deal with too many tiers in the government bureaucracy and have to secure too many permits before they can operate. And with the government not serious in purging its ranks of the grafters and the corrupt, there is just too many opportunities for wrongdoing.  

There used to be a saying in the campaign for safe sex, forgive me the allegory, that may be applicable here—“If you can not be good, be safe.” What this means, in the context of the said campaign, is that if you can not control yourself, then do not put yourself in a situation where you know you will lose control.  

In like manner, we should eliminate the situations which make corruption possible, not just trust in the goodness of our civil servants and wish for the best. And if legislation needs to be crafted to make this possible, then so be it.

Ilad

I remember buying a 25-kg sack of rice for P650 around this time of the month last year. A month ago the same 25-kg sack was selling for P750. Now it is P900 per 25 kg sack.  

The government tells us there is no supply shortage, only a price crisis. But by whichever term you call it, it is clear that rice is becoming too expensive, especially since the prices of fuel and almost all commodities have also gone way up while incomes have remained the same. 

To add to our already growing list of woes, GMA, in an interview with a foreign newspaper, said that she is mulling cutting the government’s rice subsidy. This means NFA will no longer sell rice at a heavily subsidized price of P18.25 per kilo which is about half its actual cost. Expect NFA rice to be sold nearer to the price of the cheapest commercial rice which is around P30-P32 per kilo. In place of this, the government is announcing a P5 billion aid program which will benefit around 300,000 families in the country’s 20 poorest provinces.  

A publicity stunt? You betcha. 

Consider these. Every administration has always had a program that specifically targets  the “poorest of the poor” in the poorest provinces. Ramos had his Social Reform Agenda, Erap had his own version, and I believe Cory and even Marcos had theirs. Presidents have always had poverty alleviation programs on top of their to-do lists because, come to think of it, a large chunk of this country’s population has always been mired in poverty. In fact, a good part of the every administration’s tenure is spent trying to address the various problems that perpetuate poverty incidence—such as land reform, unemployment, underemployment, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. 

So what is special about the APP? Nothing in particular. Except that it is being touted as a replacement to the rice subsidy. Even DSWD Esperanza Cabral admitted the program has been implemented in some provinces as early as January this year, months before the shit, in terms of the rice and fuel crisis, hit the fan so to speak. So in effect the government is telling us that it will withdraw the rice subsidy at this horrific time of crisis and replace it with something that it already, regularly does. 

Second, the APP program will be in the form of “health and education incentives” to the poor to be given in a span of five years. A family that sends children to health centers gets P500 a month plus P300 for every child who logs at least 85% school attendance a month. The program, however, limits the aid to three children per household for every qualified family for a maximum of P1,400 per qualified family. 

There are those who say this program teaches the poor to be lazy; there are those who defend the project for the immediate help it gives. I shall not attempt to argue about the merits of this program except to say that this should not be used in place of the rice subsidy. We are in the middle of a food crisis afterall and, if I remember it correctly Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (taught in Psychology 101) identifies food as the more basic need than health and education. First a man must eat. Then he can think about health and other things.    

What happens if the government persists in cutting the subsidy that has allowed people, from the “poorest of the poor” to middle income earners, to buy NFA rice for P18.25 per kilo? It may be important to take note that a hungry man, as they say, is an angry man.

Damn Drivers

I have been told many times that you can find the worst drivers in the country in our very own Cagayan de Oro City. Traffic rules are among the simplest rules. Yet many of the drivers here, I am inclined to believe, are blissfully unaware of the existence of such rules.  

Forget defensive driving, there are no defensive drivers here, just patsies. Just stand in any of the city’s street corners and observe—I am sure that one of the first things you’ll notice is how aggressive everyone is. Here bigger is always better. 

The chaos in our streets is telling. Traffic rules are among the simplest to follow. People do not need degrees in molecular biology or applied chemistry to know that red means stop, yellow means pause, green means go. Common sense tells us to keep intersections open to traffic, just as it tells us to signal before turning and to respect other people’s right to the road. And yet very few bear this in mind. 

But why should we care? We break the rules and what happens? Absolutely nothing  ninety nine percent of the time. Which is why we drive the way we do because there really is no terrible consequence if and when we drive recklessly and with abandon. More often than not, there are no policemen waiting, lurking in the corner. Oh traffic enforcers may be guarding an intersection one day. But the odds that they will be there tomorrow are 50-50 at best. So people break the traffic rules because there never is any certainty of being caught. 

Also, we should care because, as we probably all know, one of the prerequisites of a good city is order. There is a reason why there is no peace without order. Order makes everything easier. There is safety in order. Order allows us to proceed to doing things of more import. Order makes living with strangers bearable. We are, afterall, just a couple of hundred thousand strangers living together, breathing the same air, using the same roads. 

Pretending To Speak English

I do not know what it is they find in Cagayan de Oro so appealing or if they are just passing through, en route to somewhere scenic and exotic, wherever that may be. By “they” I am referring to Caucasian tourists who, to their credit, remain unfazed to the simple fact that Cagayan de Oro is in Mindanao(which is too often viewed abroad as a war zone which is of course farthest from the truth). 

Ordinarily I would pay little attention to them, finding most of them polite and generally unassuming. Many would come to the shop, nod to the waitress good morning, order coffee and breakfast, and then generally keep to themselves. Some would offer compliments and a warm thank you just before leaving. And some would be back at about the same time the next morning and order the exact same thing they ate the day before. 

But every so often, someone comes and rankles your nerves. It is understandable, there are bound to be some rotten characters among the many that come. Too often, you forget about the little unpleasantness and be thankful just the same for the business. 

But sometimes the plain arrogance and crappy attitude get to you. Sometimes you meet someone who offends to high heavens with his bad manners; someone that makes you wish you took that lesson instead of thinking yourself too old for boxing. 

Just about the other day, for instance, a middle-aged white male, obviously American, came to the shop at around 8 am asking, in a drawl, “what you got for ehy-tshee.” He was referring  to the banner hung outside, advertising our breakfast meal (a choice of tapa, longanisa, corned beef, tocino, and bangus served with brewed coffee, garlic rice, and two fried eggs—this is a plug if you haven’t noticed—we are at the corner of velez and chavez sts. in DV Soria). But the hapless waitress, rattled perhaps by having to deal with a foreigner, could not make out what he was saying. And so she kept on repeating over and over something about the coffee being included in the meal. In obvious frustration for having to explain himself so early in the morning, the American suddenly said, ”Nevermind, I’m going someplace else where the waitress does not PRETEND to speak English.” 

This rather arrogant behavior is sadly too common among English-speaking foreigners visiting the country. Perhaps because non-English speaking foreigners are forced, like ourselves, to adopt an alien tongue to communicate, they are more likely to make greater efforts to reach out and be understood. Which is as it should be. 

Native English-speakers, on the other hand, generally are not burdened by that kind of mind-set. They think that since the Philippines prides itself, rather wrongly at that, with having been once part of the United States of Bush Jr., then they are entitled to expect to be spoken to in perfect, grammatically correct English.  

This is bullshit, of course. We are, afterall, in our own country and whether we speak crooked English; whether we speak using our own dialect or whether we choose not to speak at all is our business. It is they who are here and hence… well, you get the picture. 

Even the much trumpeted virtue—Filipino hospitality—has to have its limits.