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South China Sea peace park: global signature drive on

South China Sea peace park: global signature drive on

by | Apr 15, 2023 | Gotcha

Google Map courtesy of lawyer Antonio Oposa

GOTCHA

written on November 18, 2022

 

A Filipino environment lawyer is leading a global petition to make the disputed South China Sea an Asia Marine Peace Park. The draft was submitted to the United Nations on Oct. 24, UN Day. A Peace Park can preserve the world’s most biodiverse coasts from war among naval powers.

Antonio Oposa pleads for world leaders to cooperate for maritime peace. “While some governments like to fight, most ordinary people like us only want to be safe, healthy and happy,” he told Gotcha.

Initial 150 signatories include prominent international earth advocates. Among them are Normandy, France Vice President Francois Priollaud, University of Sydney ecologist Ben Boer, Haub School environment law Prof. Nicholas Robinson, UN Special Rapporteur for Environment David Boyd and Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law Director Lye Lin Heng. Also Filipino musician Joey Ayala of Bagong Lumad, Palawan Rep. Edward Hagedorn and Sen. Cynthia Villar.

The Peace Park idea comes as tensions escalate between China versus Western and Asian powers over the South China Sea. China claims the entire SCS via a “nine-dash line” that trespasses the exclusive economic zones of neighbors Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam. The United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan and India defend the small countries from China’s bullying.

Oposa filed the non-adversarial petition through Manila’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ariel Peñaranda. It was transmitted to Foreign Sec. Enrique Manalo for endorsement to UN members. Ordinary citizens will be asked to sign in Southeast Asia, China and worldwide.

China President Xi Jinping will be given a copy. As Chinese Communist Party chief, Xi declared last month to prioritize environment protection, promote green lifestyles and conserve nature as socialist objectives. Lower green gas output from slowed industrial pace grants China world prestige in heading a “new global green industrial revolution.”

“An Asia Marine Peace Park can also be a moral, political initiative for President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.,” Oposa quoted former chief justice Hilario Davide. “He can take it up with ASEAN leaders and President Xi as a show of friendship and good neighborliness.”

Manila in 2016 won international arbitration at The Hague against China’s occupation of eight reefs and poaching in the Philippine EEZ. Malaysia and Indonesia use that victory to assert their own EEZs; Vietnam contemplates similar arbitration against China under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

A Peace Park can demilitarize the SCS, akin to the zone between the two Koreas, Iraq and Kuwait, and outer space. Similar too, to the 1961 treaty forbidding military occupation, nuclear waste dumping and environment degradation in Antarctica, which is solely for scientific exploration and study. In the 1990s, China’s first naval expedition to the ice continent machine-gunned thousands of penguins milling ashore.

 

Researches criticize China for environment ruin. Marine life has diminished 40 percent in Ecuador’s Galapagos EEZ due to illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing at the edge by thousands of Chinese trawlers escorted by coast guards. With 80 percent of that South American country’s petroleum as payment, China in 2016 built a faulty hydro-electric plant beside active Reventador volcano.

With loans meant for pocketing by corrupt authoritarians, China extracts minerals by the million tons from Africa. West African countries complain against Chinese poaching in the Atlantic, 6,000 miles away.

China reclaimed seven Philippine reefs using ore extracted from Chinese-financed mines in Luzon and Mindanao. It also illegally extracts black sand from north Luzon beaches. Convening in Shanghai in 2013, Chinese oceanographers and maritime lawyers criticized the CCP’s “nine-dash line” but were silenced.

Scientists describe as the world’s most biodiverse in tropical marine life the archipelagic triangle comprising the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. An Asia Marine Peace Park can preserve that for world benefit.

Oposa’s signature drive targets hundreds of millions of youths worldwide. “The SCS is not ours alone, but also for future generations,“ he said. “For peace on earth, we must have peace with earth.”

Led by Oposa, Filipino youths got the Supreme Court to compel government to clean up Manila Bay.

 

The petition:

“People’s Petition to the United Nations for nations to unite. ‘We will have peace on Earth, when we have peace with the Earth.’

“Seas of Asia – There is a body of water west of the Pacific Ocean surrounded by some Asian countries. It is a crown jewel of the Earth’s natural heritage. This sea is the breeding ground and nursery of tropical fish. Surrounding states claim ownership of the sea. One wants all.

“How can we own something we did not create, that has been there long before we were born and will be there long after we are gone? This is causing serious tensions and dangers of violence.

“Bonus Pater-Familia – Nation-states are the good fathers of humankind. It is their duty to avoid tensions and violence for their people. As good fathers, states care for Mother Earth. They must cooperate to preserve this precious crown jewel of the Earth’s marine life.

“Cooperating, not competing – Rather than compete to take as much as we can from this sea, can we instead cooperate? Can we preserve this gem of Earth’s natural treasures? Can we do this in the spirit of friendship, good neighborliness and cooperation? It will be good for the whole world, for this generation and for generations yet unborn.

“We humbly plead for the concerned states to transform their exclusive economic zones to be enchanting ecosystem zones. We respectfully petition the good United Nations to turn the international waters into a cooperatively-protected area – the Asia Marine Peace Park.”

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

Catch “Sapol” radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., dwIZ (882-AM)

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

They wasted a Filipino genius: still no justice for Leonard Co

They wasted a Filipino genius: still no justice for Leonard Co

by | Apr 15, 2023 | Gotcha

Photo of Dr. Leonard Co beside his discovery, the giant flower Rafflesia leonardi, taken by Dr. Julie Barcelona

GOTCHA

written on November 16, 2022

 

“Once in a hundred years a rare species appears that has a special role for all of creation.” Thus was Dr. Leonard Legaspi Co memorialized as foremost Filipino botanist, taxonomist and conservationist. Leonard scoured Luzon-Visayas-Mindanao forests in research. He fought for their protection from mining and logging. In the end he fell in the forests he so loved.

Leonard knew the English, Tagalog and vernacular term for every endemic grass, fern and tree. He was called a genius for memorizing all the scientific names. He studied more than 10,000 species. Eight of those he discovered. One is named after him Rafflesia leonardi, a variety of a giant Southeast Asian flower as big as a basin. He taught young scientists everything he learned in 40 years.

Tragedy struck on Nov. 15, 2010. Leonard, 56, was examining the forest in Kananga, Leyte when shot by soldiers. “Tama na, hindi kami armado (Stop firing, we’re unarmed),” Leonard shouted before breathing his last. Slain too were companions, Energy Development Corp. employee Sofronio Cortez and farmer Julio Borromeo. Two others, state forester Ronino Gibe and farmer Policarpio Balute, lay wounded.

At first the soldiers claimed that Leonard’s team fired at them, so they returned fire. Gibe and Balute belied them. All they had were two sungkit (grapnel) attached to bamboo poles, two itak (machete), a basket and Leonard’s trusty umbrella. The bamboo poles were painted orange for easy sighting. Farmers and foresters normally carry machetes.

With that the soldiers changed their story. Supposedly the five were caught in crossfire with communist New People’s Army rebels. Investigators disproved that too. Rifle bullet slugs showed that the volley came only from the soldiers’ direction. From wounds, the five were shot from behind while gathering seeds and seedlings. There were no attacking rebels.

Still the soldiers delayed, alibied and withheld evidence. In the end, prosecutors indicted a lieutenant and eight troopers for reckless imprudence resulting in multiple homicide and attempted homicide. Twenty-seven others were charged with obstructing justice.

Twelve years hence, the case pends in court. Leonard’s widow Glenda appealed in 2010 for the charge to be amended to murder. After all, the 36 respondents admitted to intentionally targeting the victims. Too, they acted with the singular purpose of killing. None could say who actually saw the supposed rebels. Ballistics showed they fired close range from higher vantage.

 

Did the soldiers ambush them? The Commission on Human Rights has been questioning such military operations deemed as civilian rights violations and even admitted in Army press releases. Short of cash, Glenda travels every two months to Leyte to attend hearings.

A University of the Philippines Biology professor in 2010, Leonard was doubling as EDC’s reforestation consultant. The firm’s former chairman Oscar Lopez had tapped him to replant seedlings at the firm’s geothermal power facility in Kananga’s Brgy. Lim-ao. Leonard’s tireless replenishing of endangered species inspired EDC staff.

Leonard was a prominent figure in UP Diliman in the 1970s. He looked nerdy in thick eyeglasses, crew-cut, camisa de chino, denims, rubber slippers and with folded umbrella under his arm. Amused fellow students watched him crouching over shrubs, scrutinizing flowers and brushing aphids from under leaves.

Leonard’s scholarship amazed members of the Biology Students’ Circle. He dabbled in Literature with the campus theater troupe Samahang Mag-aaral ng Pilipino. In 1975, he led both groups and other volunteers (me included) to replant hardwood around the grassy lagoon between the Faculty Center and the tennis courts. Every week he inspected the saplings of what are now a lush sanctuary of rare birds, insects and flora.

Environment activism and campus turbulence disrupted Leonard’s studies. Yet despite his unfinished undergrad, he was consulted by younger professors on their researches. He later breezed through master’s and doctorate programs.

Daughter Linnaea Marie was 12 when Leonard was killed. He had named her after the beautiful twinflower Linnaea borealis of Scandinavia and Alaska. Linnaea and Gladys buried part of his ashes beneath his tree in the UP woods. The rest they brought via bus, Navy boat, tricycle and trek to the Sierra Madres in Palanan, Isabela – to blow away in the forest where he discovered his Rafflesia.

Family and friends cry for justice. Watch the short film “Immortal Life of Leonardo Co”: https://cinemata.org/view?m=ms6NPFDuV

* * *

Catch “Sapol” radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., dwIZ (882-AM)

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Comelec data contradict PPCRV transparency server last May

Comelec data contradict PPCRV transparency server last May

by | Apr 15, 2023 | Gotcha

–

GOTCHA

written on November 11, 2022

 

Was last May’s presidential election rigged? It looks so for former information-communications technology secretary Eliseo Rio. He concluded fraud after comparing Comelec official data with the “transparency server” that publicized the vote count.

Comelec’s transmission report contradicts the transparency server of PPCRV (Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting). Rio overlaid contrasting graphs in his Facebook page (https://tinyurl.com/2p9xzac2).

Notably in PPCRV’s count, votes peaked at 20 million on the first hour after precincts closed. Then it tapered to 13.2 million on the second hour, onto four days.

Inversely, in Comelec’s transmission compilations from precinct vote-counting machines (VCMs), votes trickled in the first hour, peaked on the second, then tapered thereafter.

PPCRV’s results are “statistically, mathematically and logically highly improbable if not impossible,” Rio posted. “All electronic or manual counts start low, then peak and lessen.”

Comelec precinct rules make it unlikely for VCMs to transmit one hour after end of balloting, Rio explained. At 7 p.m. Election Day, the Board of Election Inspectors allows voters within 30 meters of the precinct to vote. Then the BEI chairman announces formal closure to party reps and NGO watchers. Commands are typed in and confirmed with the VCM to stop accepting any more ballots. These take several minutes.

The VCM then prints out eight copies of national tallies. Each national candidate’s votes are stated: ten presidential, nine vice presidential, 64 senatorial, 173 party-lists. Each copy takes three to four minutes to print on long rolls of thermal paper, or 24-32 minutes for eight copies. “It takes five seconds to print out your small voter receipt for one president, one VP, 12 senators and one party-list,” Rio said. “The complete precinct tally naturally takes longer. Sometimes printing stops and the BEI loads a fresh roll of thermal paper.”

As DICT head, Rio chaired the Comelec Advisory Committee (CAC) of the 2019 midterm election. “We did time-and-motion studies to determine the length of the process, and there were no presidential and VP bets.”

Comelec officials led by Chairman George Garcia presented the transmission report in an Ateneo School of Government forum, Oct. 18. A graph showed accumulated VCM transmissions.

“In that graph, VCM transmissions peaked after two hours, in stark contrast with the transparency server that peaked one hour after voting closed,” Rio said. “How can that happen when the VCMs multi-sent simultaneously to the Comelec central server, transparency server and municipal server?”

From start to finish, “PPCRV’s transparency server showed a consistent, unchanged trend of presidential and VP contenders’ rankings. It seemed the transparency server was used to condition the public mind to expect such results,” Rio concluded.

PPCRV countered that “VCM transmissions were much faster this 2022 because three telcos participated.” Also, “constant vote ratio can be explained by Law of Large Numbers.”

To dispel doubts, Rio wrote Comelec on July 15 to disclose the transmission logs that telcos submitted as required.

 

Comelec balked, saying those were too voluminous given the 106,439 VCMs. Rio rebutted that all Comelec had to do was post the logs on its website for public scrutiny. Whereupon, Comelec said the logs are now with the CAC and Joint Congressional Oversight Committee. No reply from both.

On Nov. 3 Rio petitioned the Supreme Court to compel Comelec to disclose the logs. Impleaded for mandamus were VCM supplier Smartmatic and telcos Smart, Globe and Dito. Telcos normally delete their logs after six months. Laws require Comelec to store its logs for three years.

After the four-day count, PPCRV deleted all files in newsmen’s laptops, then deleted the transparency server a week later.

Rio swore nonpartisanship. Even Bongbong Marcos decried VCM fraud when he lost the 2016 VP race.

*      *      *

Up to now, no law governs app-based ride-hailing services. Senator Sherwin Gatchalian is enacting one. The government’s technical working group (TWG) must finish its three-year-long study on motorcycle-taxis, in aid of legislation.

Until then, groups want the transport department to not franchise any more motorcycle-taxi firms. Meeting recently with Manila Rep. Joel Chua, leaders of Arangkada Riders Alliance and Tricycle Operators-Drivers Association asked to be consulted in drafting a law.

The TWG accredited only three firms for experiment: Angkas, Joy Ride and MoveIt (We Load Transcargo). Grab-Philippines’ buyout of MoveIt is criticized as a fourth company’s backdoor entry into the new sector.

Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista sees nothing wrong with the “purely private transaction” between MoveIt and Grab. But critics cite three points against giant Grab. One, Grab initially applied for the pilot test but withdrew at the last minute. Two, in September 2021 the TWG suspended the MoveIt-Grab partnership that would have allowed MoveIt to use Grab’s app instead of having its own. Three, in December 2021 the TWG ordered MoveIt to terminate its partnership since it makes Grab a virtual unaccredited fourth player.

SEC records state that Grab owns 99.8 percent of MoveIt. In effect, MoveIt is already Grab, critics say.

General manager Wayne Jacinto insists that MoveIt operates independently. He used to head Grab’s driver operations.

Digital Pinoy is one of the buyout’s several opposers. Its national campaigner Ronald Gustilo asks: “Why would anyone buy a company, then just relinquish control over it?”

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

Catch “Sapol” radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., dwIZ (882-AM)

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

ERC could have averted electricity rate hikes

ERC could have averted electricity rate hikes

by | Apr 15, 2023 | Gotcha

Energy Regulatory Commission logo

GOTCHA

written on November 9, 2022

 

Expect electricity rates to skyrocket in December. Prices of food and other basics will follow. Culprit: the Energy Regulatory Commission. Being under Malacañang, ERC’s blunders will explode in the President’s face. Unwanted Yuletide fireworks.

No choice, San Miguel Corp.’s two generators will have to stop supplying cheap electricity to distributor Meralco. The latter will be forced to buy from others at double or triple rates. Homes, shops, factories, hospitals, schools, malls, offices in Greater Manila will suffer.

ERC could have averted disaster. All SMC Global Power and Meralco jointly sought in May was a temporary P1.57 per kilowatt-hour rate hike, staggered over six months to only 26 centavos per kWh.

The slight half-year increase aimed for a breather. SMC’s generators use coal, whose price has sextupled due to Indonesia’s export ban and the Ukraine war. When SMC offered Meralco electricity in 2019, world price was less than $70 a ton; suddenly it’s over $400. Its rate petition is to partially offset a P5-billion loss in January-May 2022 alone.

SMC’s generators are Meralco’s second and third lowest suppliers among 12. They average less than P4 per kWh, unlike others’ P10 to P13.50. SMC will still be cheap despite the 26-centavo increment.

SMC does not impose onerous pass-through riders. Others have provisos to escalate generation rates for whatever cause, including mismanagement and greed, then make Meralco pass these on to customers. Meralco gets blamed when all it does is collect in their behalf.

That wee 26-centavo increase would have been best for Meralco customers. In Meralco’s scenario presentations to ERC hearings, it was the “least cost to consumers” – as required by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act. EPIRA binds all power firms to that least-cost dictum. ERC is bound too, that’s why its own engineers endorsed the 26 centavos as least burdensome to consumers.

Yet three of five ERC commissioners rejected the 26 centavos. Stick to the rates which ERC provisionally approved in 2019, they ordered SMC and Meralco. Two commissioners registered their dissent, a first in EPIRA’s 21 years.

ERC knew that the old deal was no longer workable. In nixing SMC-Meralco last Oct. 4, it said, “Any contract termination should take effect 60 days upon receipt of this decision.”

Like all major contracts, SMC-Meralco’s has an escape clause. It provides for “abrupt change in circumstances (CIC)” that upturn operation costs. SMC continues to stockpile coal; Meralco has not done anything to disrupt the set-up. Neither foresaw Indonesia’s coal ban of January 2022 and the Ukraine war starting February. Those constitute CIC to terminate if no solutions suffice or ERC issues adverse rulings.

Business execs grumbled about conflict of interest. A consumerist wrote Malacañang to revoke the ERC chairman’s appointment for being once the chief lawyer and compliance officer of a competitor. That firm is both a generator like SMC Global Power and distributor like Meralco.

Meanwhile, an ex-energy official gossiped against SMC and Meralco. Supposedly SMC will keel over from heavy penalties if it unilaterally halts the deal. Future power biddings would ban SMC, he alleged. That official was once connected with SMC-Meralco’s rival.

If anyone should fine SMC, it won’t be ERC or government, but Meralco. That’s unlikely, though, since Meralco had crafted the 2019 no-price-escalation clause with SMC in a public process that other generators shunned. That’s why Meralco and SMC jointly petitioned ERC for temporary rate hike, a compromise to absorb the coal price spikes instead of dumping it all on consumers.

Likelier 119-year-old Meralco and 132-year-old SMC will work things out. Neither would relish a protracted legal fight. Not in the midst of energy crisis of supply, prices and leadership.

Anticipating termination, Meralco prepared two options. First it sought year-long emergency power service agreements (EPSAs) to replace the 1,000 megawatts it would lose. Five of seven bidders submitted lowest rates, three of them SMC generators (including one original contractor), D.M. Consunji Inc. and Aboitiz.

All coal-fired, their weighted average is P7.9891 per kWh, nearly double the P4 of SMC’s original generators. Additional yearlong burden to customers is P12.6 billion. That was the very scenario presented by Meralco to ERC showing that P1.57 per kWh, staggered over six months at only 26 centavos, was lower than any new contract.

The other option, if ERC does not approve the EPSAs before termination, is to buy hourly from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market. WESM rates are at least P3 per kWh higher than those contracted long-term. Monthly extra burden on Meralco customers is P1.6 billion.

Being the largest distributor, Meralco buying from WESM would swell demand and push up electricity rates all over Luzon-Visayas. Customers of smaller retailers who buy from WESM will be price-shocked. ERC’s blunder will snowball.

Already, with ERC-approved pass-through provisos, Leyte-Samar suffer P15 per kWh generation rates, and Cagayan-Isabela P12. Same in Mindanao. By Christmas, more homes will have electricity connections cut and small shops collapse. Thanks to ERC.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

Catch “Sapol” radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., dwIZ (882-AM)

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

Can Marcos push away politicos from rice policy?

Can Marcos push away politicos from rice policy?

by | Apr 15, 2023 | Gotcha

Hybrid rice stalks are more and thicker, leaves lusher, and grains more abundant – SL Agritech photo

GOTCHA

written on November 4, 2022

 

“Science shall shape policies and programs,” Bongbong Marcos defines his presidency and agriculture secretaryship. “Science provides us answers to the future.” That should inspire Filipino students who always flunk international Science, Math and Reading Comprehension tests. With Marcos as role model, youths can embrace technology, not partying.

Marcos cannot stray. Palay farming suffers from backward thinking and methods. Imported machinery and fertilizer drive up costs. Typhoons add to losses.

Visiting his mother’s Leyte home-province last month, Marcos could have dropped by the country’s most modern rice facility. Rachel and Patrick Renucci’s Chen Yi Agventures is in Alangalang town, in the congressional district of Marcos’ cousin Speaker Martin Romualdez.

Renucci rice is the world’s third best. Four thousand farmers depend on the Renuccis’ ten harrower-harvester-thresher combines, five high-speed dryer-millers and five controlled-temp silos. They are taught tillering, natural fertilizing and marketing.

“We’re begging to be replicated countrywide,” Makati-born Rachel says. Congress recently made Frenchman Patrick a Filipino citizen. Within three years of their operations, Alangalang rose from fourth- to second-class municipality, now with hotels, a mall and Jollibee.

Marcos proceeded to Ormoc City fiesta, then inaugurated in Tacloban the new lights of San Juanico bridge to Samar. It was hyped as the “bridge of love”, a 1973 birthday gift of Marcos’ father president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to first lady Imelda Romualdez. He skipped Alangalang, a mere 15-minute chopper hop from either destination. Not even a short plant tour.

Rodante Marcoleta, among Marcos’ senatorial bets last May, ranted. San Juanico’s “aesthetic lighting” cost P80 million. Leyte-Samar agribusinesses reel from pricey electricity. “Half of Filipino families rate themselves poor due to burdensome electricity bills,” Marcoleta lamented, “yet we initiate this tourist attraction that would use loads of electricity.”

Rice is a political crop. Politicians worsen things meddling in rice policy.

Example is the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Program. Congress clustered the 83 provinces into 15 each, then assigned what palay seedling variety to be given free to farmers. Disregarded were years of seed matching with soil and irrigation type. High-yield hybrids were limited to only 15 provinces. Depending on brands, inbred varieties were allocated to other clusters.

Lawmakers reasoned that hybrid seeds cost two-and-a-half times more than inbred. They ignored that hybrid harvest is three-and-a-half times more.

Ex-agriculture chief Manny Piñol discussed it after Senate committee chair Cynthia Villar nixed hybrid seeds. “Should a senator dictate what rice seeds to plant?” he posted on Facebook. “Mahal daw ang hybrid at P3,500 per bag compared to P1,200 per bag of inbred seeds or a savings of P2,300. Hindi nila naisip na kung aani ng ten tons ang hybrid at six tons ang inbred, sa presyong P14 per kilo, kikita ang hybrid farmer ng P140,000 samantalang ang nagtanim ng inbred ay kikita lamang ng P84,000.

“That’s a difference of P56,000. At hindi ito inabot ng inbred rice farmer dahil nagtipid sya ng P2,300. Ano ba ang objective ng Rice Program? Isn’t it to increase production?”

Hybrid costs more because of research and development, SL Agritech founder Henry Lim Bon Liong explained to GOTCHA. But farmers and government seed procurers actually get a bargain. Only 15 kilos of hybrid seeds are needed per hectare, compared to 40 kilos of inbred. Hybrids are spaced wider apart because of better tillering: stalks are more and thicker, leaves lusher and grains more abundant.

Henry’s rice is tasty, aromatic and clean. The Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry chairman gives away tens of thousands bucketfuls every year to poor families.

Henry produces four hybrid variants, suitable for irrigated, rain-fed, humid and cool fields. All are virus resistant. All can more than triple harvests, Nueva Ecija farmer Danilo Bolos said. Like industrious-scientific Japanese rice planters, he drives an SUV.

William Dar, immediate past agri boss, boosted palay yields and hectarage. In 2019 it was 18.81 million tons from 4.65 million hectares. In 2020, 19.4 million tons from 4.73 million hectares. In 2021, 19.96 million tons from 4.74 million hectares.

Dr. Frisco Malabanan attributed the feat to hybrid. He has computations and graphs to show for it, as Dar’s adviser on hybrid and Henry’s technical consultant.

A former undersecretary, Malabanan acknowledged the country has yet to achieve rice self-sufficiency. In 2005 government imported the 1.5-million ton shortage; imports rose to 1.8 million tons in 2010, 2 million tons in 2013, and now 3 million tons this 2022. If hybrid is introduced nationwide instead of limited to 15 provinces, rice harvest can finally catch up with demand, Malabanan said.

Marcos might want to study hybrid science for his rice policies.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

Catch “Sapol” radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., dwIZ (882-AM)

            “Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter HERE. Book orders also accepted there.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

As food shortage looms, Marcos mum on plans

As food shortage looms, Marcos mum on plans

by | Apr 15, 2023 | Gotcha

Alleged smuggled radish and other vegetables retailed in Divisoria, Manila on Oct. 24, 2022. Photo from Benguet farmers

GOTCHA

written on November 2, 2022

 

“There are things a President can do that a secretary can’t,” Bongbong Marcos justifies his concurrency as agriculture chief. “Agriculture problems are so difficult that it will take a President to change and turn it around.”

Well said. But he doesn’t expound on averting food shortage starting Christmas-New Year. He even gags department officials from speaking out. “You are hereby directed to not accept interviews from the media unless given clearance by the Office of the Secretary,” his Senior USec Domingo Panganiban directed 75 subordinate bureaus, agencies, councils and regional units. That silences even the department’s newly promoted spokeswoman.

Food producers are in disarray. Fuel prices continue to soar. With diesel accounting for half of poultry and fishermen’s expenses and a fifth of farmers’, not yet including transporting to market, many shift to unrelated livelihoods.

Nitrogen shortage from Ukraine war has quadrupled fertilizer rates. With planters using less, harvests of corn, rice, sugarcane, fruits and vegetables dwindle.

Intertwined with petroleum and fertilizer imports is the peso decline versus foreign currencies. Piggery, poultry, cattle, farm, fishing supplies are pricier than ever.

Weather and natural disasters further take their toll. Three typhoons in two months ravaged Luzon farms and fishponds. Last weekend’s superstorm spurred floods and mudslides countrywide, further setting back food production and transport.

Before that, extreme humidity and corn scarcity stunted chickens. Thus, last June’s shortage in restaurant chains, United Broiler Raisers Association head Bong Inciong reminds. Expect recurrence in 2023 as oceanographers forecast La Niña for a third year. Expect super typhoons too this November-December, the months when Sendong struck in 2011, Pablo in 2012, Yolanda in 2013, Rolly and Ulysses in 2020, and Odette in 2021.

Three dozen strong earthquakes since July shook the Cordilleras, Ilocos, Zambales, Batangas, Surigao, Davao and Tawi-Tawi. Cattle and livestock raising were upturned. Volcanic tremors in Bulusan, Mayon and Taal force evacuations from lake fishpens.

Food is unaffordable. Thirty-four percent of families, 8.7 million in all, rate themselves food poor in a Social Weather Stations survey. Forty-nine percent, or 12.6 million families, say they’re simply poor. No Yuletide merriment for them.

The previous admin’s solution to food inflation was unbridled imports. That pleased consumers only momentarily. Domestic producers collapsed from competition with cheap but unsafe fish, chicken, fruits and veggies from China. Already suffering Asian swine fever, many piggeries closed down from cheap pork imports.

A President certainly can do what secretaries can’t but Marcos might do better if he stays only as President.

He can stand back and order the environment and interior departments to replant mangroves. Every mangrove hectare yields per year 800 kilos of fish, crab, shells, birds and eggs, plus edible fern and high value sea urchin – free food and cash for the poor. The Philippines has lost half of its mangrove forest, with only 250,000 hectares left. Imagine how much more food reforestation can yield.

Examples await replicating. NGOs, conglomerates and governors and mayors have done it in Bulacan, Batangas, Quezon, Sorsogon, Cebu and Silay City, among others.

Marcos’ preference to micromanage agriculture requires focus. He will have to report to the department more often than only twice on July 4 and 11. Teleconferencing can only do so much. Daily face-to-face co-working will familiarize him with issues, operations and bureaucrats.

Like, he might discover who’s messing up marketing services and Kadiwa rolling stores these past six years. Producers remain unlinked to wholesalers. Growers of red onion in Mindoro, watermelon in Laguna and vegetables in Benguet have had to dump harvest recently for lack of transport and buyers.

Panganiban, long-retired from the department but rehired in August at age 83, may not know that marketing assistance is now required by law. He blamed not his subs but garlic farmers in Itbayat, Batanes for planting garlic last summer supposedly without thinking of marketing. Itbayat has been producing garlic for half a century. But traders backed out this year because smugglers flooded nearby Ilocos and Cagayan with Chinese garlic.

Fighting agri-smuggling demands revival of an inter-department task force, as presidents Gloria Arroyo and Noynoy Aquino had. Consisting of agriculture, trade, justice, Customs and BIR bosses, the TF reported monthly to the President. It had a Malacañang core of police generals and Navy-Coast Guard commodores interdicting contraband.

Agri-smuggling dropped 25 and 31 percent respectively under Arroyo and Aquino, former TF member and agriculture and trade undersecretary Ernesto Ordoñez says.

Exposed in GOTCHA last month was the sneak-out of confiscated onions smuggled from China. Customs assessed six cargo containers at P18 million. Retailed in Davao and Surigao at P700 a kilo, the value ballooned to P100.6 million. Customs commissioner Yogi Ruiz ordered his intelligence deputy to investigate and recommend suspension of the port collector if necessary. Does Marcos know that no action has yet been taken?

Vegetable smuggling goes on. Videos and photos of contraband, with location-date-time geo-stamped, circulate online. Dozens of containers have been trafficked into Manila, Subic, Batangas and Quezon, part of 1,700 total. Senator Raffy Tulfo has identified the smuggling king as Michael Yang, likely an alias. That contrabandist is even threatening to kill Benguet planters who exposed him.

Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

* * *

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Sinovac safety efficacy and price still need clarifying

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