Zubiri’s folly is very much possible.

From ABS-CBN News:

Record-high palm oil prices due to voracious global demand for the oil used for food and now increasingly as a biofuel have left many ordinary Indonesians without their usual culinary fare.

Palm oil-derived cooking oil is a staple in the Indonesian pantry. It is used to fry many of the spicy dishes that are part of the local cuisine.

But the high price of oil has forced millions of poor Indonesians to eat their food boiled instead of fried.

“I only have fried tempe when I have money, but mostly I don’t,” said Nurhayati, a mother of five, referring to a traditional dish made from fermented soya beans.

“So my family just eats rice … and soy sauce,” she added as she scrubbed pots in a house where she works as a maid earning 300,000 rupiah ($33) a month.

In a country where about half the 220 million population live on less than $2 a day, the rising price of cooking oil is a national talking point sensitive enough to make politicians break into a sweat.

Long queues of people waiting to buy cooking oil — empty plastic containers in hand — could recently be seen in markets, a scene reminiscent of the financial crisis in the late 1990s that brought down the rule of strongman former President Suharto.

Two years ahead of the next election, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has come under pressure for his record on tackling the impact of rising commodity prices on local staples after promising to slash poverty.

“It’s a warning for the government,” said Ganjar Pranowo, an opposition parliamentarian.

PRICES SURGE BY A THIRD
Palm oil prices have been driven up by rising demand for biofuel in Europe and strong demand from food sectors in countries such as fast-growing India.

As one of the world’s largest palm oil producers, Indonesia stands to gain from the price hike, but the rise has also pushed up local cooking oil prices by about a third, making such oil unaffordable for millions of ordinary Indonesians.

As well as hurting the poor, rising cooking oil prices are worrying economic policy planners due to the impact on inflation.

Raw food prices including cooking oil rose by just over 10 percent in June from a year ago, the sharpest increase in a basket of goods and services making up the consumer price index.

Malaysian crude palm oil futures have surged about 80 percent since the start of 2006, pushing up Indonesia prices.

Saman, a 55-year-old fried snack vendor in central Jakarta, says his profits have almost halved to 25,000 rupiah a day since cooking oil prices surged.

“I use at least 8 kg (17.6 lb) of cooking oil a day. I have been thinking of quitting since the profit is so low, but I have done this for 30 years. I have no other choice,” said Saman, whose son has dropped out of school due to lack of money for school fees.

The government had urged producers to supply crude palm oil to local refiners at lower prices so that non-branded cooking oil — widely consumed by low-to-middle income brackets — can be sold more cheaply.

But to little avail.

“Even if we tried to push down the prices, markets tend to cling to a price level set by international markets,” said Derom Bangun, executive chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association.

WORLD’S TOP PALM OIL PRODUCER
Indonesia is expected to produce 17.4 million tonnes of palm oil this year, overtaking Malaysia as the world’s top producer.

In mid-June, the government cranked up the export tax for crude palm oil to 6.5 percent from 1.5 percent in a bid to ensure supply to local markets. The tax appears to have had some impact, but cooking oil prices are still higher than in the past.

Analysts suggest the government should let prices follow global palm oil prices, but focus more on helping low-income bracket families with subsidised cooking oil.

“The government could buy cooking oil at market prices and sell to poor groups at lower prices,” said Rina Oktaviani, an economist at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture in West Java.

“If cooking oil is considered a strategic commodity then the government must be responsible to make up for shortages in supplies,” she said.

(This is a long post.)

Interspersed in this blog are posts relating to values. In the previous post, I stated that Zubiri’s “election” is a sign that our values have degraded. I have decided to expound on this further, explore what we as a people collectively believe and value, how we had decided, and try to see where we are in the continuum of history.

My brother is in first year college at a public technical university, and in one of his subjects, the topic of values cropped up. I got a photocopy of the book that his instructor uses, and here is what is written; I have added the Wikipedia definitions:

Values are abstract concepts of what is important and worthwhile. These values are the basis of our judgement, of what we consider good, desirable, and correct, as well as what is considered bad, undesirable, and wrong. xxx Values are linked with actual events and are often emotionally charged. They are standards by which persons, individually or in groups, define their goals, select alternatives, and judge others as good or bad.

A norm is a rule that is socially enforced. To ensure that the norms are followed and expectations obeyed, sanctions are used. Sanctions are a system of reward or punishment.

Basically, values are one of the things we consult when we make decisions and judgments; it guides how we decide on issues and questions. We have collective values, common values that we as a people agree to and share. Now, with the past election, for the past six years, what does that say about these collective values? What does that tell about us Filipinos?

There are several events since 2001 that had severely tested our collective values:

EDSA 2

When it became obvious that the Senate would go in favor of Joseph Estrada, the people went to the EDSA Shrine to protest. They called for Estrada to resign. Some of them wanted all elected national officials to resign and for then Chief Justice Hilario Davide to assume office as president. Several Cabinet officers resigned; the last straw came when top officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines led by then Chief of Staff General Angelo Reyes withdrew support to Estrada. Despite the fact that Estrada had not resigned and was not disabled, Vice President Gloria Arroyo took her oath as President.

We acted with indignation when the majority in the Senate voted to exclude the so-called envelop. We were indignant because we thought another corrupt official would get away with it. The act just violated our sense of righteousness; the act violated our values. Yet, in hindsight, haven’t we violated our own values when someone was considered resigned despite the fact that he hasn’t? Haven’t we violated our Constitution – one document that is an expression of our collective beliefs and values – when it lists down all prerequisites needed in order to declare the presidency vacant? And we declared Estrada resigned (through the power we as a people vested on the Supreme Court) just because of someone else’s diary and a vague letter?

Haven’t we thrown the chain of command – one of the values of the military – into the garbage bin when the generals mutinied and called it withdrawal of support?

The succeeding days, months, years have shown us that some group of people had been plotting all along, and took advantage of the situation. We as a people had been had.

EDSA 3

In what one could say was crazy, an anti-EDSA 2 happened four months later. It started when Estrada was arrested for plunder and other charges, covered live by radio and TV news organizations, and carried by all newspapers. That famous mugshot had led to his then-massive support base to troop to EDSA Shrine. Agitated by several politicians, on May 1, they stormed the Fortress by the Pasig, and we almost had a different future. The people were violently dispersed.

As things were happening, EDSA 2 people were cringing – what were they doing? The Roman Catholic Church was cringing – they were desecrating the Shrine! And we all dismissed these men and women as charlatans, paid hacks, jologs, unthinking poor malnourished uncouth people.

In hindsight, these unthinking poor malnourished uncouth paid hacks knew better than us.

The May 1, 2001 Siege of the Fortress was instructive. It was an indictment of our concept of what democracy is (or was, democracy exists in name only nowadays). We began asking the hard questions – what went wrong, what error did we commit; poverty stared us in the face, and we cringed and backed away. We rejoiced when Estrada was booted out, not taking heed of the wounds that we had caused, the wounds that have never healed, the wounds that will – probably – never heal.

The 2004 elections

We approached May 2004 with alacrity and hopelessness. In one corner, we had the recipient of the bounty of EDSA 2, considered to be an “economic technocrat”, very unpopular, someone who in December 2003 vowed not to participate in the 2004 elections only to take her word back several months later. On the other is a charismatic actor, untested, considered an intellectual lightweight, popular, and worst, considered proxy for the detained Estrada. While there were other contestants in the race, we as a people saw the elections as a choice between evils. We were forced to eat our own values and choose the lesser evil.

We made a drastic turnaround that year. Whereas the defining value of 2001 was righteousness and anti-corruption was our mantra, 2004 was something vague. We were confronted with the possibility of an Estrada restoration with all its sins and extravagances. The alternative was something that we could only accept begrudgingly because we thought she could deliver on her promises, that she could turn the economy around and make sure we would not go hungry; yet she was not as clean as we thought she was. We chose the lesser evil. We failed to realize then that maybe there were other choices; we failed to realize that maybe we were manipulated to think that amongst evil, we have to choose the lesser one. We sacrificed our values for the sake of our stomachs.

The year 2004 was a watershed year for Philippine history. In that year, all of our collective mistakes confronted us front and center; our collective values were put into severe tests. Our mistakes, our changing collective values put us to where we are now. Our failed decisions had led to several defining moments, and to my view, showed that our values had changed and failed.

The Hello, Garci and I am sorry

In the runup to the 2004 elections, when we were forced to choose the lesser evil, we were conditioned to believe that the current occupant of the Fortress won the race. The surveys all pointed to her victory. Immediately after the polls closed, an exit survey showed she won; later on, the survey was found out to be wrong in several aspects. When the National Board of Canvassers began canvassing the provincial certificates of canvass, all objections, all complaints of irregularites were noted. She was proclaimed when we were all sleeping soundly.

A year later, a tape surfaced.

Faced with the possibility that we were robbed of our votes, with our values again challenged, we heard a woman talking to a man, asking if she would still lead by a million. Faced with the ugly alternative of possible chaos and economic downturn, we chose to decide through our collective stomachs.

While a few dared to choose the alternative, with several Cabinet members resigning, with several groups made the usual protests, she said “I’m sorry”, and most of us said “you were forgiven.” Meanwhile, the few who chose the alternative continued to call for her resignation; stung by May 2001, she employed all means possible to prevent another EDSA moment. The Church played along by not allowing any protest to happen at EDSA Shrine.

We all saw calibrated preemptive response in action; we chose to look away. For me, our collective values were succintly defined by a certain email. This quote defines our current values: “We are prepared to lose our freedoms and our rights just to move this country forward.”

The 2005 and 2006 impeachment attempts

Stung by the mistakes of EDSA 2, we chose to make our leaders accountable within the limits set by the Constitution. The years 2005 and 2006 saw the infirmities and lack of foresight of the Charter. We saw how reason was trumped by loyalty, loyalty that was premised with quid pro quo. And since our collective values were set, we chose not to act. We were assuming we could still fix things up; afterall, the 2007 elections was just months away. Which led us to what we had experienced these past few months.

The 2007 elections, Bedol, and Zubiri

People saw the elections differently. Some of us treated it as an indirect referendum about her. Others saw it as an opportunity to have her impeached finally. For most of us, it was just another exercise in futility; they refused to participate. But we have a confused view of things. The result was like a mutated mongrel; it highlights the confused state we are in.

If you believed the elections is a referendum, then how will you measure if the people accepts or rejects the proposition? What is the proposition in the first place?

If you wanted an impeachment Congress, then how come you elected an opposition Senate and an administration House? It is either you are really confused, or you lack the faculty of taking the long view.

The elections had shown clearly what we value:

* Locally, we vote for who we think will deliver what we want. This parochial view led to an administration-dominated House where an impeachment starts.
* We don’t care about cheating anymore. We know we exist, and we believe it can no longer be stopped. We took cheating in stride.
* We believe that it doesn’t matter if someone won via cheating, as long as he performs well and delivers.

And now, as our politicians screw up the mandates given to them, here is where we stand: we do not like Gloria Arroyo, but we cannot agree on what to do about it. Some of us would rather have her and have their stomachs full, despite the fact that some have empty stomachs. We were given all choices, we chose none of them – impeachment, people power, electing an opposition-led Congress (both houses). We wanted more of the same, we wanted comfort, we wanted progress. But at what cost? Changing our values: allowing crooks to win as long as they feed us; allowing liars to move on, as long as they feed us; allowing corrupt officials to run our coffers dry, as long as they feed us. But what if they can no longer feed us?

Values are formed and learned from experience. They are subjective, and they can change. Some of them stuck because through time they remain true. But we throw what is good for what is expedient, we will stumble. And if we fail to restore what is good, we will stumble again and again.

Juan Miguel Zubiri was proclaimed a senator, despite his victory being attributed to the problematic Maguindanao vote, with one whistleblower dead. The Supreme Court splits itself in the middle when Aquilino Pimentel III petitioned the Court to stop Zubiri’s proclamation. Most of justices that are known to be close to Gloria Arroyo voted to turn down Pimentel’s petition.

Zubiri is now in a rather inenviable position of being known as senator of Maguindanao. He should not shake that image, since he is the senator from Maguindanao.

Manuel L. Quezon III echoes what is probably the most troubling sign of the times:

At the very least, all sides should take Zubiri at his word, when he says he will work doubly hard to prove that his critics’ misgivings about him are misguided.
xxx
Only he, through legislation that makes a repeat of this year’s messy elections impossible, can turn a term of scorn into a badge of pride.

The logic behind the idea is simple: it is OK to cheat as long as you deliver, that you prove that you can do the job.

Sorry, says John Marzan, it doesn’t work that way. I agree.

This is a distressing development in our society. The degradation of simple values like honesty and integrity is scary; the emergence of the value of materialism even more so. This degradation, this apathy that had enabled Gloria Arroyo to remain in the Fortress despite the fact that she should have been booted out will enable Zubiri to erase the “senator from Maguindanao” monicker. He is OK as long as he delivers, most of us will say, despite the fact that he won via questionable means. Cheats are OK, as long as we earn our bread and get our latest gadgets and gossip.

And if the trend continues, all a mischievous politician has to do is to cheat and when “elected”, “prove” that he can deliver. We might as well ditch our election laws.

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NOTES:

1. Placeholder shows that with a little dash of command votes combined with “divine intervention”, you can get yourself elected.
2. John Marzan complains that despite a lower electricity consumption, his electricity bill is higher than last month’s. My mom noticed the same thing. Read your bill; Meralco (defensively) explains why.
3. The Philippine Experience points out the absurdity-stupidity of topsy-turvy decision making by Comelec.