Climate change

EDITORIAL

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10/16/2009

Gloria is going down in history as the first to seek compensation from the world for being a victim of climate change.

Addressing a forum the other day, she said the government, through state firm National Development Co. (NDC), will issue P50 billion in what sounded like reparation bonds for which she was obliging multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to subscribe to.

Looking at it, in perspective, the argument seems sound. The developed world is about 80 percent contributor to the green house effect that is changing global climate and the Philippines which happens to be always the first to feel the brunt of typhoons that form in the Pacific Ocean can reasonably seek damages since the tropical storms have become more vicious as years pass.

The Philippines’ topology, however, shows that the country is built to withstand the strongest of typhoons, only that its government had failed to act responsibly in making sure that its natural endowment is protected. Most of the waters that flooded Luzon during typhoons “Ondoy” and “Pepeng,” for instance, were believed to have not happened or its severity lessened if the forest cover has not been depleted.

What Gloria’s ranting thus amounts to is to pass the buck in a creative way to others for her failures in the past eight years she has been in power. Pass the buck and then gain from it appears to be the target of Gloria in exploiting the latest tragedy to befall Filipinos in her watch.

The effort to exploit is too obvious in the actions she had undertaken thus far. Among her first orders when she declared a state of calamity covering the entire country after typhoon Ondoy laid most of Metro Manila to waste and while typhoon Pepeng was about to unleash its fury, was to order Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap to start importing rice when growing the crop is not known to be a major industry in the capital.

Then came Pepeng that hit the country’s major ricefields but still Yap himself said there was no serious danger of a rice shortage since stocks remain adequate from prior rice importations and the remainder of stocks to come from harvests, despite the typhoons.

It was learned, however, that Vietnam is selling rice cheap because of a bumper harvest and to avoid its stocks from rotting or being ravaged by storms that hit the country, this means for Gloria and her adminsitration, once in a lifetime volume of fat commissions and kickbacks to be earned if the rice contracts were made to appear to have been priced at prevailing global rice rates.

Since Philippine demand practically dictates global rice prices, with the country being the biggest importer of the grain in the world, a resumption of rice importation would provide a premium for producers in raising the selling price of the staple crop in the world market.

After Pepeng, Gloria was back in her iron lady element taking the cudgels for climate change, and lately telling the world the Philippines was among its major casualty.

It was a classic Gloria “going with the flow” coup similar to branding the Abu Sayyaf bandits as a major terror organization amid George W. Bush’s global war against terror after the 9-11 attacks.

Nevertheless, the situation warranted the raising of funds for relief efforts and Congress acted with dispatch in mandating Gloria to draw money through her unprogrammed funds to raise P12 billion.

The question, however, is where to get the money since the budget is on deficit spending and the shortfall is expected to hit a record of at least P260 billion by the end of this year and not because of the typhoon, since until August, when Ondoy and Pepeng were not even drizzles yet, the fiscal gap was already P210 billion.

When Gloria and her economic schemers thought about a P330-billion economic resiliency package, they cooked up a P100 infrastructure funding to be raised equally among the country’s biggest businesses and the government, or P50 billion each. Initially, Gloria directed her usual cash cows, Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the Social Security System (SSS), the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development Bank of the Philippines, to cough up the P50-billion government counterpart. Members of the state pension funds, however, were outraged by the proposal seeing it as another Gloria political whimsy that they are being made to shoulder.

The state financial institutions backed off and Gloria instead issued an executive order directing the state holding firm NDC to float P50 billion in bonds for the infrastructure part of the ERP.

Big businesses also saw through the scheme and knowing Gloria and her cabals’ kickback record when it comes to infrastructure deals, slowly slipped out of the commitment and rightly so, since only in the Philippines are private businesses being billed for the stimulus package, which should be all government to spur private investments.

The imminent private sector withdrawal from the scheme effectively shelved the bond float.

With both ends of the P100-billion stimulus racket disintegrating, Gloria is seeing the funds to be raised from the infra windfalls frittering away.

Then came the worst weather catastrophe for the country ever and amid the hair-pulling and blame throwing, Gloria’s economic schemers thought of setting up a form of a Marshall plan for rebuilding efforts and the fund for it would be raised from the shelved NDC bond float.

A lost opportunity regained, it seems.

In one brilliant stroke, Gloria also hopes to erase much of the blame for the current fiscal state of the government and raise campaign money on the side.

All because of climate change.

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