The last two weeks were very sad for the nation. Day in and day out we looked at pictures of the devastation Yolanda wrought and listened to the stories of survivors.
Each day, I watched the evening news and wept inside. When I read Peque Gallaga’s eloquent open letter about the misfortune of having the most divisive presidency at a time the nation most needed to rally together, the tears could no longer be held back. It is a misfortune, indeed.
There could have been ways to help assuage the pain of the survivors other than shoving a bag of relief goods at them. Part of the responsibility of leaders is to provide firm emotional support for the people during times of chaos and despair, to inspire hope against a surge of hopelessness, to help soothe the pain, to provide a rallying point for the best our people can be.
Calamities do not just destroy property and take lives, they also injure the spirit. This is why there is a call for volunteers to do counselling for the victims. They need not be professionals, just plain human beings willing to listen and capable of feeling the other’s pain.
Thus far, our leaders seem to be constantly overemphasizing the mechanics of the government relief effort and underemphasizing the human dimension of this calamity. The victims are not mere clients receiving a bag of canned food. They need to feel the empathy of those who lead them. That is important, too.
Fortunately, while government obsesses with the body count, media zooms into the human drama that makes this calamity truly tragic.
Nothing captures this aspect more vividly than that disaster of an interview Mar Roxas had with Andrew Stevens of CNN. The journalist asked Roxas why the same corpses still littered the streets days after the storm struck. Roxas claimed the bodies were being promptly collected and that those Stevens saw were new ones. They only look the same because they were in uniform body bags. What a morbid lie that was: the corpses shown on video were not even in body bags.
Fortunately, too, our people ignored their callous leaders and responded to the dictates of their moral compasses. Wherever a collection for the relief effort is underway, people responded by giving until it truly hurts. The repacking centers never wanted for volunteers.
Refugees from the storm zone were welcomed with compassion. Volunteers lined up to ferry each one to their final destination. Citizens donated not only goods but also care, and by their numbers kept up our collective morale day after depressing day.
We might not be heroically led, but our people, day after reassuring day, demonstrated heroic humaneness, a collective courage and that indomitable spirit that keeps us going through it all. Praise the volunteers.
Mighty vague
Now for something a bit more mundane, although troubling nonetheless.
Before the typhoon struck, I wrote in this space about the rather miraculous business model developed by cigarette-maker Mighty Corporation. The company sells its product incredibly cheap, keeping poorer consumers hooked to the unhealthy habit.
The company sells it cigarettes for P14.70 per pack. For each pack, the company should pay P12 in excise tax and P1.58 in VAT. That adds up to P13.58 in taxes paid, leaving the company P1.12 per pack.
The P1.12 price per pack includes raw material inputs, manufacturing costs, packaging, warehousing, distribution and, presumably, a hefty profit. At that price level, Mighty makes a mockery of government claims that by raising the excise tax on “sin products,†consumers will be discouraged from consuming them.
Mighty’s incredible pricing scheme is now being investigated by curious revenue agencies, amid charges the company has been underreporting its sales, grossly undervaluing its imports and making illegal withdrawals from its bonded warehouses to avoid customs duties. While Mighty is a Filipino company, all its inputs are imported — which is probably the key to its magical marketing presence.
Government investigators are now estimating that Mighty could have evaded a staggering P4.9 billion in duties and taxes in just the first half of 2013. That is not a measly sum. It could go a long way in helping rehabilitate the typhoon-struck provinces.
In the face of a coordinated investigation involving the Bureau of Customs, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the National Tobacco Administration (NTA), Mighty issued a blanket denial of any wrongdoing. The company did not address any of the specific questions and provided no detail except to say that all its previous importations were presumed regular. But of course, regularity is always presumed until a specific irregularity is established.
In a word, the blanket denial was mighty vague. This is like Janet Napoles appearing before the pussyfooting senators, denying everything and clarifying nothing.
It might help Mighty improve its defense if it clarified the following specific points.
In the two preceding years, records show the company declared its imported tobacco leaf at $0.68 per kilogram and acetate two (for the filters) at $0.30 per kilo. During this period, the NTA verified that the cheapest imported tobacco leaf was priced at $3.39 per kilo. The same research likewise established that the cheapest acetate tow in the global market was $5.26 per kilo.
In the age of the Internet, pricing for anything under the sun cannot be kept secret. Mighty cannot be vague for too long.
Unless Might reveals the source of their bargain-priced inputs or admit to misdeclaration. This, of course, will imply some pretty hefty revenue due government.