Food riots to hit Manila soon? By GERRY ALBERT CORPUZ Column: Politics in Command Published: April 14, 2008 TOOLBAR Print Story Add Comments MANILA, Philippines, The intensifying rice and food crisis in the Philippines has raised speculations that food riots comparable if not greater in intensity to those in Haiti last week that resulted in the fall of the government, may soon hit Manila. This scenario is being discussed and debated among food experts and economic and political observers in and out of the capital region.
Cabinet officials of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have issued different views on the prospect of food riots in the country. Department of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has warned the president and government officials that food riots are not farfetched, pointing to the food riots in Haiti that led to the downfall of the government.
The justice secretary said the prospect of food riots in other countries like Bangladesh, Argentina and India are high because of the global food crisis. But Gonzalez was quickly refuted by his colleagues in the Arroyo administration.
Presidential deputy spokesman Anthony Gonzalez said riots over food are unlikely because the government is ready to address the situation, citing the 43.5 billion-peso (US$1.04 billion) agricultural subsidy released by the administration last week, including 25 billion pesos (US$598 million) worth of food aid to be released by the Presidential Palace to some of the poorest provinces in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
On the other hand, security officials led by Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro and Philippine National Police Chief Avelino Razon Jr. assured the people that the rice crisis confronting the Filipino people will not evolve into a national security concern or a threat to the security of the general public.
Last week, two of the largest organizations in the Philippines, the 3-million strong farmers' group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas and the activist worker group Kilusang Mayo Uno warned Arroyo of an emerging social volcano over the failure of the government to address the rice crisis and the food insecurity of the Filipino people.
KMP national chair and former Anakpawis party list Rep. Rafael Mariano said widespread scarcity of cheap rice and other basic foodstuffs and the state's abandonment of the people's right to food, which provoked the poor people of Haiti to food riots, are present in the Philippine situation.
KMU chair Elmer Labog said with the low take-home pay received by Filipino workers as against the skyrocketing prices of rice and other basic needs, desperation may lead to food riots, which the government will surely regret in the coming days, unless meaningful and sweeping reforms are implemented to address the crisis.
The bold predictions of Mariano and Labog were further bolstered by events that took place in Haiti, and the nerve-wracking statement issued by the International Monetary Fund that the present food crisis could lead to war if not handled and addressed properly by concerned governments and institutions all over the world.
Over the weekend, the head of the IMF issued a stern warning that if food prices remain high, there will be war and other dire consequences for people in many developing countries.
According to IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the food crisis will also create trade imbalances that would impact major advanced economies, asserting that the issue has eclipsed the humanitarian dimension of the problem.
Kahn asserted that if price spikes continue, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people will be starving, and children will suffer from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives, if governments will not pay attention and address the brewing global food crisis.
The IMF Chief said the gains achieved over the past 10 years will be destroyed, warning that social unrest could lead to war. He said social unrests are confronting Haiti, Egypt and Bangladesh because of rising prices and shortages.
The Haiti government officially fell last Saturday after senators fired Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis for his failure to boost food production and refusal to set a timetable for the departure of U.N. peacekeepers in the country of 9 million people. The ouster of Alexis was by lawmakers to satisfy the outraged populace, the majority of which are living below US$2 a day, and to defuse widespread anger over rising food prices that led to days of deadly protests and looting.
Back in Manila, while Arroyo and her apologists in the executive and legislative branches of the government refused to hear the alarm bells, their current moves speak of their political preparations in dealing with the possibility of food riots across the country.
In the House of Representatives, a resolution authored by staunch allies of Arroyo has been filed to grant her emergency and dictatorial powers to address the rice crisis.
House Resolution 512 filed by La Union Rep. Thomas Dumpit Jr. allows the president to use drastic measures to confront the crisis to the extent of using the entire military and police force to stop food riots in the name of national security.
Ahead of the passage of this resolution, military and police armed with high-powered rifles have been deployed at National Food Authority rice-selling centers all over Manila to guard against protests or any kind of provocation and disruption that would spark food riots, an indication that the government will use state violence in case riots erupt.
Over the last 30 years, Manila has no history of food riots. Despite several calamities and manmade disasters that have hit the country over the last three decades, Filipinos have not resorted to riots to express outrage over government's failure to address a food crisis.
However, Arroyo's irrevocable rejection of sound policies that would address the issue of the rice crisis and food security, and her government's obsession with the Jurassic formula of landlessness, rice trade liberalization, rice importation, corruption of agriculture and fisheries funds and junking of subsidies, will only make the situation worse and may induce people to resort to food riots.
