Urgency

It is like our house is burning and our government is in suspended animation.

On the fourth week of the conflagration in the Middle East, there seems to be a distinct lack of urgency towards the economic tsunami about to hit our shores. Almost as a reflex, government rolled out a subsidy program to soften the impact of spiking fuel prices on our commuters. Charges for commuter trains, port fees and even jeepney fares have been cut – the costs for these we will bear later.

On the third week of the war, President Bongbong Marcos has broached the idea of some sort of “crisis committee” to be formed. No details about this has been disclosed and many fear it could be another version of the utterly useless ICI.

Meanwhile, several senators have suggested declaring a state of emergency – although principally to address the frightening fuel supply situation. The suggestion comes in the form of press statements and is not supported by any comprehensive proposals.

Congress has rushed legislation to allow the President to cut excise taxes on fuel. But our finance officials are hesitant to do this. Its short-term benefits are limited while its long-term fiscal consequences will certainly be disastrous.

In what is seen as a PR move, the President reversed the decision to hike transport fares. This is unsustainable. Transport operators will not shoulder the added costs of fuels without fare recovery.

The suspension of transport fares will be as disastrous as the proposal to put a cap on the price of rice. If such a cap is imposed, rice shortages will happen. Retailers will not sell products below costs.

Our trade officials are scouring manufacturers, begging them to postpone price increases of prime commodities. This, too, is unsustainable. If prices do not reflect costs, supply disappears.

Our tollways, like our commuter trains, are private businesses. Government is leaning on their operators to postpone price adjustments. That means they will not earn expected revenues and possibly fail to finance their loans. In which case, our banking system suffers down the road.

All the solutions offered so far seem to rely on spreading the pain to businesses as a means to score brownie points with consumers. We could see businesses fail, magnifying the economic damage.

All the solutions penalize our fiscal stability and force us to borrow more. But as this global crisis worsens, borrowing may be harder to do. Financial institutions will prefer to hold on to their cash than lend this to a government already drowning in debt.

All the solutions seem to rest on the assumption that the economic dislocation will be short term. Only Donald Trump still thinks in this way.

On the fourth week of this war, we are sure the economic distress will stretch for much longer. Supply chains have been broken. Unemployment will rise sharply – magnified in our case by the dislocation of our migrant workers.

The situation will be more urgent by the day. We will not be entertained by PR statements. We want to see a workable and comprehensive national survival plan.

Warrantless

Something strange happened at the compound of Vibal Publishing along Araneta Ave. in Quezon City last March 9.

A group of private security guards were deployed in the afternoon of that day to assist in the service of an NLRC Writ of Execution reinstating the company’s CEO Kristine Mandigma. At around 5:30 p.m., policemen from the La Loma station arrived on the scene. After hours of discussion without resolution, the policemen left. At around 11:30 p.m., the same policemen returned and proceeded to arrest all 10 security guards assigned to the compound.

On review, the Quezon City prosecutor’s office dismissed four of the five charges filed against the guards: grave coercion, trespass, usurpation of authority and disobedience. Eight of the 10 guards were promptly released.

But this is not the end of the story. The law firm Fortun and Santos describes the arrests as arbitrary detention and announced they were exploring legal remedies to what happened.

Vibal Group president Gaspar Vibal filed a sworn statement alleging that the policemen’s return to the company premises the night of March 9 was not spontaneous. He claims the policemen were acting at the behest of his siblings.

The Vibal siblings are in a legal dispute over control of the company. Gaspar’s sisters are respondents in a separate SEC proceeding involving alleged financial misconduct.

All the tangled legal proceedings involving the siblings is a separate matter. The behavior of the policemen is another.

Questions have been posed to the PNP’s Legal Affairs Service regarding what happened. Under what authority was the SWAT team deployed to intervene in the service of an NLRC writ? What was the factual basis for the warrantless arrest of the company’s security guards, given that they were securing service of a labor tribunal’s order? Who initiated the complaint that brought back the same police contingent close to midnight? What communication preceded that deployment?

The police Internal Affairs Service (IAS) has serious investigation to do here. The fact that the arrests were warrantless, the fact that the charges filed by the police were in the main dismissed, the allegation that the arrests were directed by a private party with a stake in stopping the application of a government order: all these questions need answers.