By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY Arthur Yap has just hurled a challenge in the direction of Governor Amado T. Espino and the rest of our provincial officials and employees: Do your part in helping the Philippines stave off a looming world food crisis.

Yap, who traces some roots or affinity to Dagupan City (and sounds proud of it each time he mixes with local folks), said the food crisis in the world stage is real. And he ticks off figures showing that grains production in the country has been steadily declining even as consumption is growing.

Of course, Yap said, this is largely due to several inter-related factors bearing down on the farmers’ capacity to produce as much as they used to: increasing prices of oil, fertilizer and transportation, all serving to make life and production difficult for the farmer.

“This means that in the face of the impending shortage of grains, we have a big responsibility heaped upon our shoulders,” Yap told officials and farmers at the recently concluded Agriculture Exposition in Rosales. He said he was happy though because now the attention of the government has shifted back to agriculture.

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Yap’s “challenge” to Pangasinan leaders to improve the province’s agricultural productivity as part of the overall Philippine effort to be prepared for a looming world food crisis, could not have come at a better time.

As it happens, the provincial government led by Espino is reportedly set to borrow money from the bank to the tune of some P950 million – that’s a little less than a whooping billion in pesos—for still unspecified purposes. (At presstime though, Provincial Administrator Raffy Baraan has reportedly denied there is such a plan for a bank loan despite Board Member Alfie C. Bince’s earlier cautioning words on the wisdom of getting a bank “credit line”.)

As Bince had calmly observed, going by the Governor’s Report to the Province delivered last week (thru the voice of Senor Rafael as the governor had a hoarse voice) in Lingayen, the governor’s office was citing infrastructure and more infrastructure but hardly mentions any significant program for agriculture and livelihood.

Yeah, why indeed? What use are superstructures and imposing buildings when the stomach is groaning?

Our guess is, Yap’s fortright message may have hit home and some refocusing of priorities will be seen in the Capitol drawing boards now. Whaddya think?

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LAW students, especially those studying international law, must now be finding the current issue on the Philippines’ action in the Kalayaan Group of Islands or Spratlys a thrilling case for discussion.

Already, legal experts and luminaries have chimed in with their views on how defensible or indefensible the government’s position is on the issue. It’s a gem of a legal point and if pursued to its conclusion, perhaps, soon become a precedent in territorial and sovereignty jurisprudence once it reaches the Supreme Court like many people now predict it would.

Is it “treason,” as insinuated strongly by some senators and opposition types or is it creative diplomacy as the Palace’s legal beagles and secretaries – even including former Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr. who has some love lost with the Arroyo administration himself – strive to insist?

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As anyone who bothers to read the newspapers knows by now, the joint “seismic survey” contract was signed on September 1, 2004 between China and the Philippines originally. When Vietnam, which also claims some islets and reefs in the disputed waters, balked over its being left out, the agreement was rewritten to become tripartite between the three nations and was signed on March 14, 2005.

According to Bernard Wain, a writer-resident in the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and a former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, in an article written for the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), the Philippines, in effect, allowed to be included in this agreement parts of its own continental shelf that are not even being claimed by China or Vietnam. This, Arroyo critics proclaim, is an act of treason.
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The President however defends it as a strictly commercial venture between the national oil companies of the three signatory-nations that does not change the sovereignty claims of the three countries. “It is a historic diplomatic breakthrough for peace and stability in the region.” De Venecia, for his part, said government was simply taking a practical tact, turning the disputed territory “from an area of conflict into a zone of peace and cooperation.”

Our humble take on this is: Some Mighty Sam is stage-managing the whole imbroglio. And everyone, administration and opposition, as skillfully managed by the Big Brother’s Hand, is predictably getting into the act, the process now unraveling by itself and on its own momentum, to become yet another masterful manipulation of the Philippines’ oft-mouthed passion for independence.

In our quest to defend sovereignty, we are unknowingly subverting it – while a more cunning and selfish Pied Piper happily leaves the scene of a nation in tatters.

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So, how’s the media jueteng payola issue going now?

Our source says the bagmen’s rounds are now more discreet but the deliveries to the croaking mediamen come like clockwork on the 7th, 15th, 22nd and 30th of the month.
Surprisingly though, some of those originally tagged in the list published by the scandalous ‘Hataw’ tabloid earlier are now supposedly telling the “less blessed” in their group that the “promoters” want things to “cool down muna” and to “lie low” till the heat is off. Now, which is which?

(See, we told you – there is such a payola or, as Ermin puts it, “medyola.”)

Looks like the old pros are up to their old tricks again, putting one over their less astute colleagues while they laugh all the way to the bank with the latter’s shares or “allocations.” Nakana na naman kayo, mga inong at ineng!

If it’s of any interest to you, dear readers. this week five local newspapers are publishing a pooled editorial – a common view – on the jueteng issue in the province and addressing it to authorities who should know how to stop it.

The newspapers are Sunday Punch, The Pangasinan Star, Northern Journal, Weekly Guardian and Northern Times. Needless to say, their move should dispel any notion they are part of any Greedy Group in the Media that’s now in the grip of jueteng’s long-reaching tentacles.

In these times of moral crisis, no one must stay neutral.