Impressions and facts

During the long Christmas holidays, I had several opportunities to talk with friends as well as new acquaintances from the Filipino Chinese community. They represented a cross section of the hard working “Tsinoys” who were either employed or ran their own businesses. As expected they were all politically aware and concerned for the country but not necessarily obsessed with politics.

In the course of different social or family events, a common concern kept surfacing or was expressed. The general impression was that Secretary Arthur Yap on behalf of the Department of Agriculture through the National Food Authority has been buying all our rice imports from Vietnam instead of first buying all the available rice in the Philippines.

As a consequence, the assumption is that someone is either making money or will eventually benefit from the “preferred status” given to Vietnam rice farmers and traders.

If you analyze this common or “popular” impression, you could say that on one side; there is a dislike, distrust or an operation intended to hurt Art Yap. On the other hand, we could sense a nationalistic undertone and concern for Filipino farmers and Philippine made products.

To be fair, none of the people who commented on the issue were related or engaged in rice trading. None of them had political leanings either.

It was with this concern that I chose to pinch Secretary Yap last Monday by saying that if the elections were done in Vietnam he would be the number 1 Senator. The joke did not sit well with Art who was obviously stung by the ball from left field. I have never really criticized Yap since he has always been on the list of “OK Cabinet members” like DOH Secretary Francisco Duque, Tourism Secretary Ace Durano, Finance Secretary Gary Teves to name the few.

Nonetheless I chose to pinch him because the impression that he was responsible for rice imports was for real and was obviously going around. After greeting me a Happy New Year the good Secretary very politely pointed out that:

“FYI, I don’t buy NFA rice that is being imported. It is a committee chaired by DTI or Department of Trade and Industry with Department of Finance and Department of Agriculture as members. The committee reviews the offers then allows the NFA to buy. There are other offers that the NFA buys, but it does so based on the lowest prices. That can be established as a fact through documentation.

The article, on financial support from rice traders in Vietnam for the senate is..well…very sad and painful to say the least, especially since a friend wrote it, anyway, Happy New Year pa rin.

In his second message, we were already text mates and the Secretary further enlightened me with more info:

“Thanks Cito for the reply, anyway, imports this year will surely be lower, because in 2007 nfa merely bought 33,000 metric tons from local farmers. In 2008, nfa bought 700,000 metric tons. A 30 year high. We made sure that before we consider buying foreign, we will do our best to buy locally first to support local, and not foreign farmers.

What we are buying is a volume that the local production cannot support anymore even as 2008 rice production grew again. We are going to declare probably 16.7 million metric tons volume of paddy rice production. Highest in record, but of course, the population growth of 2% is still a force to be reckoned with. We also need to pass a land use act to stop land conversions decisively. The tsinoys whom u said are griping must belong to the rice traders and millers sectors…they definitely feel bad because they’ve been hit with a double whammy…locally, we are competing with them in procuring local palay which means higher palay farm gate prices for our farmers. On the retail side, we are also competing with them in terms of distributing affordable rice. That has translated to lower rice prices. No amount of PR can stray from the truth and reality. Ganun talaga…inflation must be curbed for now. Food must be affordable in a period where 2/3 of the globe is in recession.

U talk about a senatorial run for me? I can’t even get the support of the Tsinoys you mentioned in your text. I just pray we all survive 2009 with our friends and our loved ones and that 2009 will be kind to our people and fair to us all. Ingat”.

*   *   *

I don’t normally print out responses verbatim, particularly in full detail. But in this case, I strongly believe that part of the problem with the prevailing (mis) impressions is that the people who are suppose to get the message out are not doing a good job of it. The second problem is that we live in a “highlight” world where sequence, details and consequence are often deleted or edited. The third problem is that people like Secretary Yap are guarded, cautious or simply short of time to communicate or teach others about the stuff they do. Only when they get pinched or get hit from left field do they have enough reason to stop, try to understand why and then communicate.

Fortunately, Secretary Yap and I have a healthy respect and honesty towards each other. As a rebuttal to his initial text, I pointed out to Secretary Yap where I thought the problem was, I also told him that real friends will and should “pinch” each other for their well being, and for him to think that I was not his friend for being a critic would be his loss.

The great discovery in this episode is that when I “pinched” Secretary Yap he said “ouch !”. I will not declare him a saint but it is comforting and encouraging to know that we still have a few cabinet members that are “inside the coverage area” of humility and has not turned their units off!