“We ended our reunion after more than three hours, happy we are still around, yet with the sinking feeling that the future would be bleak.”
So many events transpired in the two weeks we serialized our observations and suggestions on how to deal with the country’s food staple.
The promulgation of the executive order that would bring down tariffs on rice, corn, frozen meats, and other products until 2028, or as clarified later by the NEDA, echoed days after by DA, that such reductions could be revised upwards as inflation eases.
If so, why prescribe till 2028? The signal to our farmers and livestock sector was bad.
Then there was the Reuters investigative report on how the US demonized COVID vaccines produced by China, a dastardly misinformation that caused thousands of death while Pfizer and Moderna, the US vaccines, were yet unavailable, for which our ambassador to the US of A tried to finagle from his host country (once our colonial masters who a former president of our “republic” praised for its “benevolence” in his inaugural address) by suggesting a trade-off between vaccine availability and VFA extension but was still rebuffed.
There was the June 17 attack by Chinese militia on a supply mission upon the beached MV Sierra Madre.
Government clearly did not know what reaction it should make until after five days, when no less than the executive secretary pooh-poohed the attack as an “accident,” likely a “misunderstanding,” and declared that hereon we will announce the schedules of our re-supply missions to our marooned men in the decrepit navy vessel to prevent such “misunderstandings.”
This pusillanimous reaction was to be rebutted two days after by our defense secretary who declared the June 17 attack was a “deliberate, aggressive action and an illegal use of force.”
And when questioned the day after in a Senate committee hearing, he declared “it is not a misunderstanding or an accident,” and he put it “on the record…under oath.”
So which is which?
Meanwhile, our president prefers to just mouth the usual platitudes, speechifying in King’s English mixed with good Tagalog in front of his soldiers.
Which brings me to a very recent dinner of five, four of whom had served in government along with a respected journalist who refuses to retire.
After many observations on the true “state of the nation,” including a first-hand encounter with a high official who demanded “something” for doing an act which is part of his usual responsibility to the people, all of us wondered what kind of country we would be leaving to our future generations.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked, “we” referring to the Filipino people, not necessarily to myself who in senior years keeps ruing the fact that our electorate always elect the least among us to lead us, be it local or national dynasts who have consigned us to becoming a feudal state under the false patina of democracy.
One of us tried to be a bit more optimistic, as he tried to convince another to run for public office once more, and perhaps give some “sense and sanity” to a much devalued Senate.
I kept mostly quiet on the matter as I do not want our common friend to suffer through another six years of crusading for something that is impossible to achieve given our existing polity and the systems by which governance in this land is practiced.
Nor do I think his better principles would rub off on his pork-addicted colleagues, some of whom have been convicted both by magisterial bar and the bar of public opinion.
We ended our reunion after more than three hours, happy we are still around, yet with the sinking feeling that the future would be bleak.
Then again, our recently resigned education secretary and vice-president said our former president, her father, and two of her brothers would altogether run for senator in next year’s mid-terms.
My own reading of the out of the blue announcement: don’t bet on it.
It’s straight from the patriarch’s playbook — keep everybody guessing.
The likelier scenario come October: FPRRD runs for mayor of his city once more, while one of his sons, likely Mayor Baste, will go for a senatorial post next year while Paolo guns for re-election as Davao City representative.
And Inday Sara either goes back to Davao in 2028, or if the political climate is good for her, she will go for the presidency.
