EDITORIAL - All for show

There has been, over the past few days, a surge of seizures of different items believed to have been smuggled. There was that seizure of P116 million worth of smuggled assorted goods in several container vans. This was followed by the seizure of 10 smuggled Honda Fit cars.

But before congratulations begin to pour in for a job well done by the authorities, it might be worth considering for a while what the surge of apprehensions means, as they can be seen in two different ways.

The natural way of looking at it would be that the authorities are on their toes and that they should be praised for the successful outcome of their diligence and vigilance. A second way of looking at it, on the other hand, may be a little off-hand.

As there should be no problem with looking at the seizures the natural way, let us look at them the other way, the controversial way. Here goes: If the authorities can seize, in rapid succession, several hot items, why can they not do the same all the time.

The two apprehensions in rapid succession came just days of each other. Prior to that, everything was as quiet as the night before Christmas. Nothing stirred, despite the fact that everywhere you looked, you can almost get swamped by goods too abundant and foreign to be true.

If you go over the files of newspapers or tapes of radio and tv broadcasts, you can go as far back as several months with seemingly nothing extraordinary happening with regard to the landing of foreign goods on local shores.

The silence is uncanny considering that columnists in the national broadsheets have almost grown limp writing about rampant smuggling of rice, sugar and other goods, with Cebu getting very special mention.

Indeed, a long silence followed by a sudden surge can be an indication that the Manila columnists may have hit something that drove the authorities running. A surge is not supposed to follow a long silence. It's either complete silence or continuous apprehensions, no in-betweens.