T H U R S D AY : O C T O B E R 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
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OPINION lettertotheeditor@thestandard.com.ph
IMPROVING THE COCONUT INDUSTRY THE Philippines is the secondlargest producer of coconuts globally. It is the top exporter of 47 coconut products and byproducts, with the United States, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and China being the top destinations for our local coconut products. These export products include coconut sap sugar, coconut water, coconut oil, desiccated coconut, coco shell charcoal, coconut water, activated carbon, and handicrafts which have become sought-after items in many trade exhibits annually held abroad. Currently more than 3.5 million farmers derive income from the billion-dollar coconut industry, while 23 million depend on it for livelihood. About 12 million hectares of farmland of the country’s total 3.4 million hectares of farmlands are coconut plantations; and 68 of the country’s 79 provinces are coconut-growing areas. Ironically, even as the coconut oil is the largest dollar earner among Philippine agricultural exports, coconut farmers remain the poorest among our farmers earning a meager P40-P50 a day. Years of neglect together with the cocolisap infestation and the se-
vere calamities brought about increasing change in the global climate are among the serious challenges that the local coconut industry continue to face. During the recent Super Typhoon “Yolanda,’’ more than 33 million trees in the provinces of Quezon, Guimaras, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Cebu, Eastern Samar and Leyte were damaged in varying degrees. Data from the Philippine Coconut Authority reports that about 15 million trees have been totally destroyed and even with the most ideal conditions, it is going to take six to nine years before coconuts return to full production. In the interim, our coconut farmers will have nothing to look forward to unless alternative livelihood solutions are developed almost immediately. Definitely just replanting coconut trees isn’t going to be enough to help solve the dilemma of our coconut farmers. What is saddening is that a number of published studies have already declared that the coconut sector offers numerous opportunities for livelihood
and job generation. Moreover, if our government should choose to capitalize on these opportunities, it is expected to increase not only the productivity and income of our coconut farmers, but more importantly, it can provide as a strong hedge to alleviate poverty. Of course the potential mentioned will require capital for technologies and infrastructure to harness the value-added products from coconut, and the way things are, our coconut farmers will continue to remain poor unless serious interventions are undertaken by both government and private sector. Government should work on giving due benefits to the coco farmers particularly through adequate programs to combat the cocolisap, the improvement of coconut breeds and projects that will allow our farmers to diversify, become more productive and benefit firsthand, particularly on the wise use of the Coco Levy funds. The funds which were started in during the Marcos era was successfully grown through the busi-
ness and management acumen of Danding Cojuangco. Compared with other government projects, the fund steadily grew under his supervision. From an initial estimate of P9.695 billion in 1986, coco levy funds have since ballooned to about P93 billion. To make wise use of the funds and ensure that our farmers directly benefit from it, PNoy should probably appoint a coconut czar before his term ends, and hopefully this should continue under the next President. Talking about national priorities and continuity of governance, I would like to stress the point that few of our countrymen notice that we are on the brink of anarchy. Among those vying for the 2016 elections, the BinayHonasan tandem is the only one putting the state of criminality of the country as one of their priority. As I have stated before, our streets have descended into anarchy because of the neglect this administration has given our peace and security. The country will surely benefit from the visionary leadership, experience and strong political will that have been demonstrated by both men during their long years in public service.
WHAT CAMPAIGN DONATIONS CAN’T BUY By Megan McArdle “MONEY can’t buy you everything.” “The best things in life are free.” “I don’t care too much for money. … Money can’t buy me love.” Turns out timeless clichés and the Beatles understood the 2016 election season before the rest of us did. All that dangerous, dastardly outside money that people have been worrying about since the Citizens United decision? Stunningly irrelevant. The New York Times has a nice summary of campaign fund raising and spending to date. Hillary Clinton has done well in both traditional and PAC fundraising, but that might be effect as much as cause: The obvious frontrunner and already-crowned establishment candidate is going to do well in fundraising, even if the money isn’t needed. So let’s look at the Republican race. By June, Jeb Bush was the GOP PACman; he had raised more than $100 million, and spent over $10 million of it. Second in such fundraising is Ted Cruz, who raised $38.4 million in outside money. The two of them together have 60 percent more cash than all the other candidates combined. They are currently tied for fourth place in polling. Meanwhile, Scott Walker, who used to be running third in the PAC race, has already dropped out, as have Rick Perry and his $13.8 million worth of outside funds. Marco Rubio, with a comparatively dainty $17.3 million, is doing better than the three early leaders in outside fundraising—and yet he’s still being blown away in polling by Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who have raised, to a first approximation,
zero in outside funds. As Paul Blumenthal, Sam Stein and Scott Conroy write at the Huffington Post: “According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, outside groups—super PACs and political ‘nonprofits’—have already poured in more than $33 million to promote Republican candidates in the primary campaign through mass communication like television, radio, online advertising, direct mail and phone-banking... Meanwhile, two candidates whose most significant source of outside help has been free media attention—Trump and Carson—have consistently remained the top two candidates in both national and statewide polls.” Where are all those shadowy billionaires we were warned out? The ones subverting American democracy with their ill-gotten lucre? The lucre is being spent, in vast amounts. But $200 million in PAC funds is no match for a billionaire openly campaigning to get a hold on the levers of political power, and a neurosurgeon on book tour. No wonder Larry Lessig’s single-issue campaign to get money out of politics isn’t going anywhere. How are Trump and Carson doing it? It’s that free media. While campaign ads may work (campaigns are certainly convinced that they do), they’re no match for getting your face on the nightly newscast. People tune out advertising, even when they haven’t gotten up to get a snack or go to the bathroom. It’s much better to have your candidate talked about on the program itself. And boy, we’ve certainly been talking about Donald Trump. Of course, we also talked about Ebola. It wouldn’t poll well. Carson and Trump obviously thrive not
only because they get attention but also because they appeal to a GOP base that is rebelling against the party’s establishment. The establishment candidates—which is to say, the ones tapped into longstanding networks of advisers, donors and campaign staff—are the ones who are doing best on the PAC front … and nonetheless taking a beating at the polls. This doesn’t quite mean that money doesn’t matter. It tells us that money is at best an amplifier. It cannot make a terrible candidate into a winner, and it cannot overcome broad and strong democratic preferences. And frankly, I don’t find that surprising, because it’s consistent with what I know about lobbying. Ask a lobbyist, and you’re apt to hear that money can get you in the door of a lawmaker’s office but is not getting you out with much unless you can also explain to this politician how your proposal is going to a) make people better off and therefore b) encourage more people to vote for that politician. In Washington, the ultimate currency remains votes, not cash. One could say that money doesn’t matter of our existing campaign finance rules: Rick Perry had plenty of PAC money, but he still had to drop out because that money couldn’t be used to pay his campaign staff. Even looking at the campaigns that still have plenty of ordinary contributions, it’s hard to tease out any relationship between outside funds and doing well at the polls. If money mattered as much as those who excoriate the Citizens United decision seem to believe, Jeb Bush should be walking away with this election. Instead, he’s already starting to look like an also-ran. Meanwhile, we should also count the cost of some of those
campaign reforms: They’ve helped sideline the political parties’ establishment leadership, and helped create the current partisan gridlock that so many people lament. People keep asking why John Boehner can’t control his caucus, even though the answer is obvious: He has neither carrots nor sticks with which to keep them in line. He can’t use earmarks to give anything, and he can’t take anything away, because parties no longer control either ballot access or fundraising the way they once did. What’s left? Jawboning them about the good of the party, which he has tried, endlessly, with little success. At this point, both the Democratic and Republican parties look more like heritage brands than the powerful institutions they used to be. One by one, we’ve stripped away the means that parties used to control their membership: replaced party bosses with primary elections, limited the ability of big donors to directly fund and influence campaigns, cracked down on earmarks and other pork-barrel policies, torn down the congressional institutional structures that used to let a few powerful politicians essentially control what bills made it to a vote. Each step was hailed as a progressive move toward a more flourishing democracy, and perhaps they were. But the more perfect our democracy gets, the more it seems to tend towards chaos. Witness the astonishing longevity of Trump as an electoral force. So far this election season, the good news seems to be that all that outside, unregulated money isn’t nearly as powerful as people thought. Oddly, that may also be the bad news. Bloomberg
TYPHOON... From A9 landslides that would cause a lot of destruction to families living along the dangerous slopes as it happened a few years ago. Happily, there were no reports of deadly landslides this time. But with the many old pine trees uprooted by the typhoon, there are now less trees in the city. Already, there are home owners with workers cutting trees located close to their houses for fear that these trees would fall on their houses. In the area where we live, two pine trees went down. One closing our main road and the other destroying the roof of a neighbor. There is one big tree only inches away from our house and we had to watch it for two days for signs that it might also go down but it held. Although we loathe cutting trees, we might have to get a permit to cut this tree and plant replacements where it is not dangerous. Country Club also had some of its trees falling on cottages, so was the more-than-a-century-old campus of Brent School where quite a number of trees fell down. Clearing operations are now going on and the working crews of the electric cooperative are also going around trying to restore power throughout the city which they are doing much faster this time. During typhoons, people would go to the only mall in town to spend their time. But this typhoon forced the closure of the mall up to now because strong rains flooded a lot of the mall stores. There are now just too many people living in Baguio nowadays. And it is not the only place whose environment is under pressure due to increasing population. The original plan was for a city of 25,000. Now, there are 330,000—and counting. People are simply allowed to build houses anywhere including areas that are not safe. This is similar to people in the lowlands being allowed to build houses along flood prone river banks. Climate change is a phenomenon that has arrived and we are perhaps the first generation of humans that are experiencing the destructive effects of changing climate patterns. Although our country is in the forefront in the fight to mitigate climate change, so far, aside from the rhetoric, we have not seen concrete programs undertaken. Yes, we read in the papers requests from some government agencies asking for funding for climate change mitigation projects but no tangible accomplishments. Baguio which prides itself as the premier vacation city has done everything to destroy that reputation by not planning and implementing a sustainable urban growth that would preserve the environment. From what I have been informed, Tagaytay is now a much better alternate destination to Baguio. And why not? Baguio is a prime example of how to destroy a beautiful city by bad governance and politics.