At last we have seen a rare act of delicadeza from an officer of the law, and for this, we salute Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III
The chief of the Quezon City Police District resigned from his job, after deeply regretting that he allowed an abusive ex-policeman who figured in a road rage incident to hold a press briefing in his office.
At last we have seen a rare act of delicadeza from an officer of the law, and for this, we salute Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III.
“I apologize to the Filipino people for those actions because those are decisions made in a very short span of time. In hindsight, we have 20/20 vision. I could have done it better with the same result, but it already happened,” the general explained.
Many other officers of the law, and indeed so many officials higher in rank in the whole of government would have stayed put, “morir antes de dimitir” as the language of our forefathers described, and would go to great lengths to the point of lying, in vain justification for lapses and actions far graver than what Gen. Torre was taken to task for.
Though I too sympathize with the cyclist, and condemn the harsh action taken by that ex-policeman-turned SC employee (don’t they check the background of those they hire, being the highest tribunal at that?), the brouhaha the incident elicited from the public via social media showed public propensity to be riled by day-to-day, micro-abuses while glossing over, even resigning themselves to the evils of official corruption and inefficiency in public service.
Which is why General Torres rare act of delicadeza is to be admired all the more.
This guy should go places up the police hierarchy in the near future.
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Singaporeans just elected Tharman Shanmugaratnam as president, by an overwhelming 70 percent of the vote, over two other candidates with equally outstanding qualifications.
The 66-yearold economist was a former deputy prime minister, and beat a former chief investment officer of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and a former top executive of a huge insurance firm.
While their presidency is largely ceremonial, and the head of government is the prime minister, soon to retire Lee Hsien Loong, very stringent requirements are needed to qualify to run for president.
Singapore requires candidates to have served either as a senior civil servant or the chief executive of a company with shareholder equity of at least 500 million Singaporean dollars (US $370 million).
That’s P21 billion, folks.
Here all you need to be a senator is good looks, song-and-dance abilities, or be a charlatan, and failing these, have half a billion pesos to throw away, because our Constitution requires candidates, even a president, to be a natural-born citizen, of age, and able to read and write.
Look at the present composition of our Senate, what once was called the training ground of presidents, and weep when you read about countries like Singapore, not as free-wheeling as our democracy, but where citizens, who incidentally are required by law to vote, and where no candidate dares to buy votes, and you conclude that, indeed, our democracy pays us no dividends.
***
So now the president, in what one might call as an act of desperation, has ordered price ceilings for the retail of rice.
Starting tomorrow, together with yet another increase in the pump price of oil and that of LPG, retail prices must not exceed P41 for regular-milled and P45 for well-milled rice.
This was done after the Speaker and some members of the HoR, along with customs officials, inspected a few warehouses in the Inter-city trading center in Bulacan.
What are the net effects of these two actions?
First, the supposed mountains of rice seen in the bodegas “raided” do not really amount to much. They are normal inventories in the rice business.
Assuming they were all imported, they constitute about the usual volume of an import permit, around 10,000 tons, even less. Vessels carry twice, even more than that amount.
Incidentally, the nation’s daily consumption of rice is 32,000 tons, and for the last four years, we have been importing an average of 3 million tons of the staple.
Try using your computers and see if the volumes inspected can classify as hoarding.
The inter-city trading post is where truckloads upon truckloads of rice are transported to different other warehouses of wholesalers and retailers.
But, admittedly the inspections constitute good optics, and the usual suspects when rice prices are on the upsurge are condemned by media and a public whose arithmetic ability is woefully low.
Now, go figure.
If you raid bodegas and padlock them for 15 days or so, what happens to the natural flow of supply to our markets?
Clearly, the supply shortage constricts further.
And by the way, why must Customs officials give these suspected hoarders 15 days to produce proofs?
Why not just ask the BPI, which replaced the NFA in granting import permits?
Or doesn’t the BoC have computerized records?
With rice prices still rising, the chief executive cum agriculture secretary, upon advice of DTI and DA table planners who refuse to acknowledge bad harvests and admit their inability to forecast needs versus supply early on, imposes price ceilings.
The facts are simple: when the private traders and millers were buying palay at P23 upwards (now as high as P35), while state-owned and state-castrated NFA could only buy at P19, then obviously there is a supply problem.
As we keep writing in this space, its Econ 101.
Now that India has closed its export doors, followed by Myanmar, then Thailand and Vietnam have increased their prices such that private importers refuse to buy, while those the DA asked to buy last month and bought high, are now facing price controls for their staple.
We always make the private sector the scapegoats, villains even, and yet we are not willing to allow the State, through the moribund NFA to import to fill up the slack, and subsidize the price.
What happens to the middle class retailers who bought high, and now must sell low?
What happens to the importers who bought high and must now sell low? Or the millers who bought at P25 per kilo of palay, and must now sell at a P5 to P10 loss per kilo?
Of course they will not release their stocks, and retailers will refuse to sell.
Likelier than not, they will fill even their houses with tons of rice to beat the price control inspectors instead of losing money.
I heard one official appealing to retailers, “for the sake of the public” to sacrifice profits.
But look, they will not just break even; they will lose.
Will the market master free them from rent?
Will government pay them daily wages, and refund their losses?
Next time around, with harvests forthcoming later this month and October, what will happen to the farmers who for once in several harvest times made a tidy profit last May?
Now here comes the other shocker: If DA thinks the September-October harvest will be sufficient, and that is what they keep assuring the president cum DA Secretary, surely they know that with all these weeks of rain during germination time, the dearth of sunlight means an awful lack of photosynthesis, producing palay grains with chalky, inferior grains and lower production volume.
And additionally worrisome, what happens when strong typhoons lash the rice producing areas this month and next?
Will price ceilings be like a cork in the genie bottle, that will defy the law of supply and demand?
Or will the cork pop up like a champagne bottle explosion?
In July last year, when I resumed column writing after the elections and President Marcos Junior had been inaugurated, I titled my article “From electoral tsunami to a perfect storm”.
I pray that “perfect storm” does not come upon us.
