Antics in Senate hearing on rice smuggling

Malou Apalisok

Sparks didn’t fly between Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte during the Senate committee on food and agriculture hearing on rice smuggling last Monday.  The two have been at loggerheads over rice smuggling with Mayor Duterte criticizing Secretary De Lima for not filing a case against businessman Davidson Bangayan, also known as David Tan, reportedly the Goliath of rice smuggling. De Lima has said time and again that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not file any case until the National Bureau of Investigation  gathered enough evidence against Bangayan to ensure the cases will stand in court.

“The trouble with us in government is that we talk too much, act too slow, and do little.  What the country needs is not more laws but more good men in public service,” Duterte said in his opening statement.

The obvious swipe aimed at the DOJ, National Bureau of Investigation, National Food Authority, Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Customs—agencies conducting parallel probes on the rice smuggling issue—set the tone for Duterte’s testimony although I believe the remarks were also directed at Congress because despite numerous hearings in aid of crafting laws, the legislative body has not come up with anything significant to make smugglers shake in their boots.

In the process, the government with all resources at its command has been proven to be tame and inutile in bringing before the courts the perpetrators, including those who coddle and shield them, whether in or out of government.  Smuggling cannot happen without the cooperation of various state agencies tasked to guard the illicit flow of goods into the country. Rice smugglers are not at all hindered by Customs seizure proceedings because court injunctions and temporary restraining orders can be had if the price is right, according to reports.

Indeed, more than 50 years of conducting the criminal activity under the very noses of government agencies according to a study by an international body, have made smuggling the most blatantly systematic crime in the Philippines today.

During last Monday’s hearing, Duterte, after pointing to Davidson Bangayan as the main man in the rice smuggling ring, told the Senate panel that he  will not hesitate to kill the trader if he unloads smuggled rice in Davao City.

The trouble with Duterte’s statement is that if he is so sure about Bangayan’s direct involvement in rice smuggling and the DOJ’s inaction, why did he not come up with even a single evidence to back up the charge against the purported rice smuggling ring leader?  That will immediately expose Secretary De Lima’s purported inaction.

I also don’t understand why Sen. Cynthia Villar, chair of the Senate committee or Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who is supposed to be an expert of the law did not quiz Duterte on the quality of intelligence reports from Davao City’s intelligence community.  Certainly, if the mayor has the goods on Bangayan, he could have presented them in an executive session or used the evidence to confront the trader during the hearing.

While the Senate was trying to probe the rice smuggling issue, an international body was just about to release a report which showed that some US $410 billion worth of smuggled goods flowed in and out of the Philippines over the past 52 years.

Last Tuesday, the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) reported US $133 billion in outflows (capital flight) and US $277 billion in inflows (misdeclared and unreported transactions) went unreported in the Philippines from 1960 to 2011.

The US $133 billion in capital flight and US $277 billion lost in terms of misdeclared and smuggled goods deprived the Philippines of revenues that could’ve been used to help the poor, according to GFI.  In a talk with Rappler, GFI managing director Tom Cardamone declared, “This is a crisis situation” for the Philippines.

Most people tend to dismiss smuggling as a generic corruption issue but when tied with statistics which show that one out of five Filipinos are poor, the situation tells that smuggling is pushing millions of Filipinos deeper below the poverty line.

Because smuggling has deprived the government of huge revenues that would have gone to better social services for the majority of the population, the state must show better resolve in the battle against all forms of smuggling.