GMA unfit to solve rice crisis - KMU

Militant Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) today urged all Filipinos to hasten moves to oust the “fake” Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, citing her recent orders regarding rice crisis as additional reasons. “We were amused with the theatrical way in which she held a hasty meeting at the NAIA after her arrival from Hongkong and ordered her Cabinet to respond to the impending rice crisis,” said KMU Chairperson Elmer “Ka Bong’ Labog.

“It projects GMA like she can’t wait to work toward meeting the looming crisis head on, but really, empty showbiz moves like that can’t reassure Filipinos,” said Labog, especially since the orders GMA gave to her Cabinet will only “exacerbate and not solve” the rice shortage in the long run.

The labor leader said it will be more disastrous to further strengthen trade liberalization and further sabotage the agricultural capacity of the Philippines to achieve food security. Instead, KMU said now should be the time to eschew liberalization and work for rice sufficiency and greater food security through a real agricultural reform program.

Enough of Lip service

We need a government and a president who’s really elected by the people and takes the welfare of the majority of Filipinos to heart, said KMU. Labog said “turning the government and the NFA into a bigger rice importer, trader and distributor, as GMA’s orders to her Cabinet tells us she’ll do, will not bring sufficient or affordable rice to our table. Instead, it will drive us into greater import dependency and higher-priced rice in the future.

”KMU said most of GMA’s orders to her Cabinet in response to the looming rice crisis focused on ensuring a sufficient quantity of rice (increasingly imported) are sold to the people. Though she ordered the Cabinet to “spur an increase in rice harvest,” it’ll be nothing but lip service without a genuine agrarian reform program, Labog said.

“How could the Philippines earn ‘enough’ to afford more imported rice and approach GMA’s fictitious ‘good economics’? Our history of consistent deficits shows that we have never earned enough from exporting a greater number of our workers, or attracting foreign investments with our low-wage workers here, or urging foreign corporations to come here and extract our rich natural resources for a pittance,” said Labog.

The KMU proposed instead that while in the short term the government may indeed have to resort to importing rice, it should take aggressive steps to have more lands devoted to rice as soon as possible. “It should scramble to give farmers more and real support in terms of providing locally suited rice seedlings, other farm inputs and implements, and the much needed irrigation as well as pre and post-harvest services. There should not only be a ban on land use conversion, there should also be efforts to review past cases of conversion.”

Put more crudely, there should be no Sumilao, Hacienda Looc or Hacienda Luisita cases in our memory if CARP had been a genuine agrarian reform program, said KMU. Labog added that the IRRI’s report about our increased rice production per planted land is instructive as it tells us that we have the makings for achieving rice sufficiency.

“But not if a fake president like Arroyo is regaling us about not aiming for rice sufficiency but rather, hoping against hope to earn enough to be able to afford rice coming from elsewhere,” said Labog. He said that given Arroyo’s track record of corruption, it’s also highly doubtful if the P5 billion she set aside for the rice crisis will indeed go to productive uses.