Presidential trust: All Alcala has left

Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala and National Food Authority administrator Orlan Calayag are busted. They’ve been publicly denying knowing the alleged big-time rice smuggler Davidson Bangayan, aka David Tan. Yet all this time they’ve also been granting him control of million-ton imports of rice. Tons of money too must have changed hands, for Bangayan is not a farmer to qualify for NFA special import quotas. By self-admission, he is a consolidator (financier) of truly qualified farm cooperatives.

And what does Malacañang say in light of the documented exposé? The usual: that President Noynoy Aquino continues to trust the duo.

Well, so what? It’s not presidential trust that makes an appointee honest. If at all, misplaced presidential trust emboldens the appointee to carry on the racket. That’s what Alcala and Calayag likely will do, until they become too hot for Malacañang to handle. “Presidential trust” are the famous last words to appointees about to leave office. Remember the chief of Customs?

Alcala and Calayag signed “performance contracts,” Malacañang adds. Their 2014 work will be judged by their written commitments.

So, what could Alcala’s contract state? Is there a rider that he may, for whatever alibi, again put off his sworn Philippine rice self-sufficiency by 2013? Will he finally end the NFA’s rice importing at $100-overprice per ton of the annual 700,000 volume? For that and two other scams Alcala is facing charges of plunder. Is such heinous offense not a minus in his contract?

As for Calayag, he never was qualified for food-security chief, which is what the NFA administrator’s duty is. He has had no experience in food production and distribution. He was but Alcala’s gofer in Congress. Thence he immigrated to America, acquired US citizenship, took on odd jobs, and returned when the NFA had a vacancy. After fudging a sworn résumé, he filed for dual Filipino citizenship. (See Gotcha, 23 Oct. 2013.)

What did Malacañang say when all that was exposed? Of course, that the President has confidence in Calayag. Verily, the President entrusts the country’s food security to a half-foreigner.

Now the Customs reports that 50,000 tons of rice per month was smuggled into the Philippines in 2013. That could only have happened with the collusion of crooks in the NFA, which Alcala and Calayag tightly control. Yet even with that flood of smuggled rice, there was a shortage right after the midyear “bumper harvest.” While farmers were hurting from farm-gate prices depressed by smuggling, consumers also suffered surging retail rates of P28-P33 a kilo, from the old P22.

Presidential trust in Alcala-Calayag can only spell more of the same.

*      *      *

Ill-conceived was President Aquino’s declaration today, Chinese New Year, as a public holiday. Congress already set the national holidays in a 2007 law. There are already too many in that RA 9492: 16 days a year. That’s 16 days of no-work-no-pay for majority daily-wage earners, while factory owners must pay employees double for the same work. That’s 16 stay-home days for schoolchildren, apart from when there’s storm, flood, or local holiday. Adding yet another day-off worsens sloth and under-education.

What could have egged P-Noy to declare Chinese New Year an official feast? Was it for “holiday economics,” like his predecessor’s bunching of long weekends for people to travel to the countryside and thereby stimulate rural spending? If that was the idea, then P-Noy got it all wrong. Gloria Arroyo didn’t concoct new holidays, but merely moved the observance to Monday or Friday of those that fell in midweek.

Maybe P-Noy’s reason was racial tradition (most Filipinos, like him, have Chinese blood) or astronomic (first new moon). If so, what would stop him or any future President from feting other cultures and astro-events as holidays?

Indeed, why not make a day-off the Sikh New Year, Mar. 14, both in religious and racial honor. Same with the Zoroastrian New Year, Mar. 21, a religious, racial (Persian), and national (Iran) festival.

Why not fete the Thais among us and make Siamese New Year, Apr. 1, a holiday. Or like the Hindus and India, mark the start of spring or the solar cycle as New Year’s. The moveable first spring day is also the New Year for most peoples of the Caucasus.

Then there’s the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, celebrated in autumn on the first two days of the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar. Or the Muslim New Year, Hijri, on the first day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. Not to forget, the Alexandrine New Year, Aug. 29; the Ethiopian Enkutatash, Sept. 11; and the Gujarati’s Bestu Varas, the first day of the Kartak calendar, sometime Oct. or Nov.

*      *      *

Epimaco Velasco was a big man literally (6’1”) and figuratively. So his passing last Monday from heart attack is like the felling of a large tree: it leaves a huge hole in the forest canopy. He was 78.

Uncle Epi rose to prominence in the NBI with the killing of the Philippines’ most wanted man, Nardong Putik, in 1971. In 1992 he became the first NBI director to rise from the ranks. Thence he became governor of Cavite (1995), and Secretary of Interior and Local Government (1998).

He lies in state starting today at the San Agustin Church, Tanza, Cavite. Cremation on Sunday 9 a.m., then from the ancestral house on Calle Bigti, funeral march at 3 p.m. to the Santa Cruz Cemetery.

*    *    *

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

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459, or The STAR website http://www.philstar.com/author/Jarius%20Bondoc/GOTCHA