Rice crisis brings out taray girl anew

Steamed up over rice, or the seeming lack of it, President Arroyo yesterday vented her ire yet again on National Food Authority administrator Anthony Abad and several officials of the NFA.

Mrs. Arroyo’s temper flared as she publicly castigated officials of the NFA in Cabanatuan City during a surprise inspection she made in Nueva Ecija.

The NFA officials earned the President’s ire when they were unable to present her with the official logbook of the inventory of the reported 15 truckloads of NFA rice from the authority’s Cabanatuan warehouse, supposedly the largest NFA warehouse in the country.

The President was en route to her scheduled attendance of the "Unang Sigaw ng Nueva Ecija" celebration in San Isidro town marking the province’s celebration of its first uprising against Spanish colonial rule.

Abad, Mrs. Arroyo’s former student, bore the brunt of her ire in front of Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor and Nueva Ecija Gov. Tomas Joson.

The President announced her appointment of Presidential Adviser on Agricultural Modernization Angelito Sarmiento as NFA chairman at the Cabanatuan celebration.

Once at the function, the President said she has "zero tolerance" for the rice supply crisis driving up the price of rice, especially in Nueva Ecija, often called the country’s rice granary because it is the biggest rice producer in the Philippines.

She told the crowd that "although lately I have not been going ballistic, the Gloria temper got out again!"

"I don’t believe in calibrated solutions," the President added, "it is better to overreact that to have a crisis. Nueva Ecija plays a big role in rice (production)."

While the Chief Executive said she is satisfied with the volume of palay she saw in the NFA warehouse, she was not happy with the fact that these raw grains have not yet been milled.

"I saw there are many stocks of palay (that are) not yet milled," the President said, "so there is no reason for the price of rice to increase in Nueva Ecija."

Mrs. Arroyo admitted she had been nagging Abad when she could not see NFA rice sold at P16 per kilo being displayed in Metro Manila markets when she conducted a series of market visits last month.

"I want to speed up milling, speed up transport to market because I want regular milled rice at P16 (per kilo) sold to the poor," the President said.

"It does not matter if rice is sold at P25 (per kilo) to the rich. There must always be regular milled rice at P16 (per kilo) available for the poor it the markets. That is the specific objective of my visit to NFA," Mrs. Arroyo added.

The President also said she was ready to blow her top again if she finds no NFA rice sold for P16 per kilo in the markets of Cabanatuan City. "If there in Cabanatuan, there is no P16 (per kilo NFA rice), then we really have a problem," she said.

According to her, "the price of rice is the problem of the rich. The problem of the price of rice for the poor must be the problem of the government."

This latest NFA slip-up is only one of other similar incidents that have earned Abad the full force of presidential wrath. The first time the President was angered by the Abad was when the she received reports about the delay in the release of about one million sacks of NFA rice stocked in a private warehouse in Batangas.

Abad reasoned out then that the Batangas rice would not be released because the whole shipment had already been bought by a private buyer. He also said the President may have been "fed the wrong information" about the Batangas rice problem.

When informed of Abad’s reply, that had been broadcast over radio stations, Mrs. Arroyo let loose a streak of expletives during her live press conference at Malacañang. — Marichu Villanueva