SONA: the P20 kilo rice and public accountability

As I prepared to write my column this morning about the approaching SONA next week, I asked my local community-based “political analyst,”  Virginia Blasa, for her thoughts. Many Virgie is a 70-year-old senior veteran of barangay community affairs and citizens’ organizations in Canaman, Camarines Sur, known as an articulate, aggressive, and strong-willed leader who can speak on varied social and political issues as sensibly and even more sharply as your favorite political scientist on television. Why would I ask a poor farming woman who only reached high school to give her two centavos worth of opinion?

I do not mean to poke fun nor belittle a national event like the State of the Nation on July 22 for the third SONA of the President, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr, before a joint session of Congress at the Batasang Pambansa complex in Quezon City.  I believe the best key informant is not the middle class or the upper-class businessman, the landowner, and the store manager, but the ordinary people. This most affected sector has survived through decades of challenges and economic difficulties. They will tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

Accountability

Manay Virgie is a keen political observer, who used to be an election participant either as a political leader, campaigner or just an ardent voter of the incumbents in the past.  She listens to political debates; the SONA is a much-awaited time every year.  She believes that the SONA is the time for the sitting President to report to the people on what the administration has or has not done. In her own words, she calls the occasion “araw ng paniningil,” or a day of reckoning or day to account for one’s accomplishments or non-accomplishments.

As political observers assert, the May 9, 2022 elections were the most significant in the Southeast Asian nation’s recent history, with about 55 million or 83% of the Filipino voters cast their votes. This election, which the son of a former president and dictator, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, won by a significant margin, is historic.  Next week, he will give his third State of the Nation Address or the SONA. What will his SONA be like? It can be the opening salvo for the 2025 mid-term national and local elections, which is why the Batasan SONA this year is expected to be the biggest in terms of attendees.

The P20 peso kilo of rice

If the SONA is the day of making an accounting of one’s accomplishments or not, what could be the most exacted promise, if ever? It would be about the President’s P20 peso promise for a kilo of rice.

In every election, bringing food to the table remains the most popular promise. Politicians vow to provide jobs and shelter and raise wages. However, food for people experiencing poverty and hunger can tickle people’s interests and win votes. It is the promise of affordable rice because rice has been a significant part of the Filipinos’ diet and tradition for centuries.

I asked Manay Virgie “anung pangako ang masisingil sa Presidente? “Itong 20 pesos na bigas,”she quickly replied.  (This 20 pesos per rice). Then, I asked, “Kumusta na buhay nyo ngayon mula nuon?”  “Eto buhay pero walang buhay, “mas hirap maraming pamilya, gutom at walang trabaho.” (We are alive but no life, life for many families are poorer, hungry and without jobs.)  

If the State of the Nation Address (SONA) is an accounting for what the presidency accomplished and did not or failed to accomplish, the gut issue of food and hunger remains the most crucial issue. Last April, the Social Weather Station poll showed that 46% of Filipino families consider themselves poor. The results hardly changed from the December 2023 survey, which found that 47% of Filipinos rated themselves poor, 33% were borderline, and 20% were not poor. Four out of 10 Filipino families consider themselves poor.

Being poor means not being able to eat three times a day, and rice is the staple food that people experiencing poverty do not have. Data from the Department of Agriculture showed last year that regularly milled rice at the markets in Metro Manila was priced at P36 to P42 per kilo. Well-milled rice was sold at P40 to P46 per kilo, while premium rice was sold at P42 to P49 per kilo. On the other hand, the local commercial rice was at P48 to P60, as shown by the DA data. Today, in 2024, rice costs P54 a kilo, the highest in Asia, and the country remains the world’s top rice importer!

In 2022, the President gave his formula for bringing down the cost of rice to P20 a kilo: subsidize, set a price ceiling, regularly inventory rice harvests, buy local farmers’ crops, and fight rice cartels. Many Virgie agrees, but she argues that we can do it if we have land for subdivisions, roads, and commercial development instead of land for food.

Farmers are the backbone of our economy. Manay Virgie says the only way to solve the problem is to produce more rice and food. More food production means we can have more affordable rice. As the President promised, we can have the promised P20 if the farmers have their own land to till and plant rice. With farmers having access to land to till and plant, we can have sufficient rice.