Angara goes all out for Estrada - DEMAND AND SUPPLY by Boo Chanco

"Give us three more years," Agriculture Secretary Ed Angara pleaded, "and we will fix what’s wrong with Philippine agriculture." I don’t think there is any way to interpret that other than a plea for the embattled Erap. Significantly, it is coming from Ed Angara, who was himself rumored to be considering resigning from the Erap Cabinet.

Just days before Frank Drilon, an Angara ally and fellow Sigma Rhoan, resigned from the ruling coalition, the two were spotted in Hong Kong. I was told they were there for a serious assessment of their political futures. Sources tell me Angara and Drilon decided to leave the coalition. That was precisely what Drilon did and lost the Senate Presidency in the process.

Angara tried to distance his LDP from the ruling LAMP coalition but when a vote was taken, the pro-Erap LDP members prevailed. Ever the survivor, Angara claims he managed to get the President to agree to abide by a Code of Ethics in running the government.

Angara is proud of the Code of Ethics he drafted. In a press briefing last Thursday, he urged us to publicize it so people will know there is a new Erap. I was of course, skeptical. Would the Code cover the cronies like Jimmy Dichaves, Manny Tan, Lucio Co, Dante Tan, etc.? What about 02, 03, 04, 05, etc.? An Ethics Code is useless unless Erap imposes it on them too.

I found the thought of Erap abiding by a Code of Ethics funny. But not as funny as the news that Erap is joining the Couples for Christ. There must be a mistake. He probably heard wrong, you know, like copulate instead of couples. Don’t expect a joke at the end of this column. This is it.

Agri sector performance

Anyway, Angara was proud of the performance of the agriculture sector, and rightly so. The sector grew by 3.45 per cent in the first nine months of 2000. That’s on top of a 6.9-percent growth the previous year. Angara’s official line attributes this to the Administration’s efforts to boost the sector. There are those who think the growth in agriculture happened simply because of good weather. In other words, a gift from Mother Nature.

To be fair, I think it is a little of both. Angara’s style of management by wandering around must have something to do with it. It keeps subordinates on their toes. And whatever the reason for the growth, it is there. Now, Angara is trying to use it as an argument to keep the Erap administration in power.

Angara may be trying too hard. For one thing, he himself will admit that there were serious blunders in the sector that can be traced to Erap’s penchant for helping his friends.

Take the matter of rice importation. Angara admitted that at least half of the million tons or so of rice imported last year were not needed. Those surplus rice imports depressed the farm gate price of palay. They wiped out whatever little money rice farmers make even as Erap cronies made a killing.

Come to think of it, this may be a ground for impeachment. The prosecutors should summon Angara to shed light on this. Angara was overruled by Malacanang to favor the cronies on this issue. The Erap cronies, through the NFA, subsidized the foreign farmers and fattened their wallets. And they did this for rice and sugar. That must be impeachable.

But it won’t happen again, Angara reassures, because NFA is now completely under the Agriculture Secretary. There will be no more kibitzers in the agriculture sector, Angara insists. Erap has given him full autonomy. Angara said he just couldn’t understand why Ronnie Zamora is always announcing Angara is running for the Senate next year. To ease him out of the Cabinet, perhaps?

Food security

Three more years, Angara says, and the neglect of agriculture by previous administrations will be forever rectified. He needs this time, the former Senate President said, to carry out such objectives as food security. He defines food security as being able to forever end the need to import rice. Teka muna. I am not too sure he has the right objective in mind.

The way I see it, the first order of business is to increase the income of farmers. Forcing them to plant rice in non-irrigated land, for instance, merely condemns them to a life of perpetual poverty. I think Malaysia has a better policy of being happy with 65-percent food security, plant other higher value crops to earn the forex to buy rice from the world market.

We are now just about 95-percent self sufficient in rice. Should we force farmers to plant rice in land that is less than optimum for rice just to attain self-sufficiency?

But it is possible to plant other higher value crops that will increase farmer income more than five times. I realize Angara also has programs in this direction. It is a question of focus. I am afraid that because of urban political considerations, he will concentrate his meagre resources on attaining 100-percent self sufficiency in rice and in the process make the rice farmer’s life more miserable. A bumper crop nationwide is not always good news for rice farmers who always suffer the consequences of over production.

But for politicians, self sufficiency has good propaganda value. It does not matter to them that what we more urgently need is a program that will enable the Filipino farmer to earn more than the P10,000 a hectare he makes on rice per cropping or P20,000 per year. That’s P1,666 a month to support a family of five or more.

On other matters, Angara reports that the Australians have seen the light. By curtailing our cattle imports from the land down under, they have agreed to buy more fruits from the Philippines. They are offering a number of assistance packages but he is insisting that we want trade, not aid.

Angara also said that the tough stance he took on the importation of chicken parts has paid off. He said he talked to the grains producers in America to help tone down the shrill cries for WTO sanctions from the chicken parts exporters. If our local poultry industry collapses, Angara warned the US grain exporters, then we can’t buy their products. But I suspect it helped that Malacañang dropped a crony who was doing most of the chicken parts importation.

On the whole, I think Angara is one of the bright spots in the Erap Cabinet. And if he has convinced Erap to reform, as he claims, he may have even accomplished an impossible task. Maybe, Gloria should retain him in Agriculture. His political orientation aside, I think Angara has his heart in the right place for agriculture. I agree that we should give Angara three more years on the job, but not necessarily under Erap.

Gossip

Now, here’s a little gossip I heard the other day.

A juror in the impeachment trial is celebrating the birth of his 81st child, a girl.

What is he trying to do? Run for president? Another prospect for Couples for Christ, perhaps.

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])