EDITORIAL - "Nawagtang sa pasa"

There is a Cebuano term that goes “nawagtang sa pasa” which, loosely translated, means something like failing to keep up or getting lost in developments, often as a result of some deliberate maneuver.

Well, the Land Transportation Franchising and Development Board, which naturally leans toward transport operators when made to choose between them and an unprofitable sector like the riding public, has just granted a provisional fare rollback in the amount of 50 centavos.

The swiftness with which the LTFRB granted the 50 centavos rollback, as petitioned by the transport operators themselves, was mind-boggling. Never has the LTFRB granted a petition with such swiftness.

But why did the transport operators themselves file a rollback petition when only a few days ago they have even threatened to go on strike if so much as a centavo was shaved from their windfall increase of two pesos granted when oil prices first started going up?

They filed the petition, whose granting they knew how to ensure, in order to preempt something they knew was coming. They felt that if they did not intervene, the continued drop in oil prices will necessitate a return to the original fares before the two-peso increase.

They knew that if a 50-centavo rollback was granted, and there was no way it would not, it would then become very hard to introduce another rollback that would go back to the original fare even if oil prices get back to their own original levels.

The transport sector is a greedy bunch that only thinks of its own self. When fares were raised by two pesos, they were raised for one reason and one reason only — oil prices were going up.

But when oil prices started to go down, the transport sector refused to take corresponding fare cuts, hemming and hawing about some of the most ridiculous reasons they can muster, such as high prices of eggplants which have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

But because it became apparent that fare cuts were truly necessary in face of continuing drops in oil prices, the transport sector, with the willing collaboration of the LTFRB, decided to pull the wool over the riding public's eye. Nawagtang sa pasa ang publiko.