A misplaced zealousness

Last week, I apparently upset quite a few people by taking the side of singer Martin Nievera in the matter of his recent rendition of the National Anthem. This time, let me ruffle a few more feathers by weighing in on what’s come to be called the “Book Blockade of 2009” — the sudden discovery by the Department of Finance (DOF) that imported books should be taxed, regardless of the law and previous practice.

Prior to all this, books have been coming in to the Philippines duty-free, under the provisions of the 1950 Florence Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials, which the Philippines signed in 1952. That agreement was sponsored by the UNESCO to promote the free flow of knowledge around the world, and it’s accorded its signatories the privilege of duty-free and therefore more accessible books ever since.

So what happened? I was away when reader and fellow blogger Martin Cruz alerted me to the brewing tempest, so I read up on it online and established the following:

1. Because of the runaway success of a popular novel (Stephenie Meyers’s Twilight), a Customs examiner named Rene Agulan decided that its importer ought to be paying duties on it. Faced with the prospect of having no books to sell, the importer complied.

2. Alas, not just Agulan but his superiors in the DOF realized that they were sitting on a gold mine. Finance Undersecretary Estela Sales released new guidelines and her boss Secretary Margarito Teves subsequently issued a department order limiting duty-free importation to 10 copies per institution and two copies per individual, and otherwise imposing a one percent tax on “educational” books and a five percent tax on “non-educational” books.

This contravenes, however, not just the Florence Agreement, but also our own more recent and most applicable law — RA 8047 or the Book Publishing Industry Development Act of the Philippines, which created the National Book Development Board. Not surprisingly, the Book Development Association of the Philippines — an association of Philippine book publishers—and the NBDB itself have protested the DOF order strongly, citing both the Florence Agreement and its effective reiteration under RA 8047.

In its position paper (which you can find at http://nbdb.gov.ph/images/M_images/nbdb_position_paper.pdf), the NBDB quotes directly from the Florence Agreement Guide: “Under the Agreement, books, newspapers, periodicals and many other categories of printed matter are granted duty-free entry. Printed music, maps and even tourist posters are similarly exempt. All the items of this annex to the Agreement, except architectural plans and designs, enjoy exemption from customs duties regardless of destination. Books are the most important category. The exemption granted to books is not subject to any qualification as to their educational, scientific and cultural character.” Nowhere is a limit set on the number of copies that can be imported duty-free.

The BDAP, which has appealed the DOF order to the Secretary of Justice for his opinion, also noted the irony of the fact that it was Finance Secretary Teves himself who co-authored RA 8047 — back when he was a congressman.

So why the sudden eagerness of our tax collectors to go after the book importers? Teves’s DO 17-09 itself doesn’t explicitly say why, but by setting limits on how many books individuals and institutions can bring in tax-free, and by collecting taxes on everything above those limits, it does come across as another revenue-generation measure — which, to be fair to the DOF, is after all within its mandate.

But in seeking new money, can the DOF reinterpret the law on its own, and go against both the spirit and the letter of the Florence Agreement and RA 8047? Here, Usec. Sales’s creative justification for her reading of the applicable provision of RA 8047 (taking “the tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing” to mean “books… to be used in book publishing,” whatever that actually means) borders on the absurd. (Is there an exemption from the Florence Agreement exemption? Yes — only when “national security, public order, or public morals” are involved. As the BDAP argues, revenue generation isn’t one of those grounds.)

True, books are commodities like any other, and if the authorities insist on interpreting and applying the law in its narrowest, most ridiculous sense, I suppose they could, even if it means flouting a noble and sensible international convention we signed on to.

But this kind of action reeks of desperation, and can only lend credence to the suspicions of a public all too used by now to a rash of kidnappings and bank robberies on the eve of national elections. It demonstrates a misplaced zealousness better applied to the collection of taxes on truly big-ticket items (such as the smuggled crude oil pegged last year by Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes at P14 billion in lost taxes) and from big-time tax evaders. By all means, collect taxes from whomever and wherever they may be lawfully due; but respect the status quo ante and spare us our books, which are often our only comfort in these hard times, and our people’s best hope of improving their minds and futures.

Which brings me back to last week’s piece on the anthem and the law — the Flag and Heraldic Code — that Martin Nievera’s critics have rediscovered to threaten him and other deviant anthem-singers with. I’ve read the law more closely, hoping to find some leeway for artistic interpretation but finding none. It’s a dour, demanding measure, which if strictly applied will punish anyone who sings the anthem too slow, too fast, off-key, and without fervor (yes, the law requires that singing be done “with fervor”) with up to P20,000 in fines and one-year imprisonment. Next time I’m at flag ceremony, I’m going to be glancing left and right and pricking my ears to make sure no one strays from the straight and narrow — especially those government officials who barely mumble the lyrics while I’m straining to hit the high notes.

All this reminds me of one of my favorite sayings: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Of course — unless you cheat by Googling — you’d need to import and read a book of American literature (or at least one of quotations) to know who said that.

* * *

E-mail me at ” penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.