News Release
February 17, 2008
Reference: Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano, chairman, KMP and president, ANAKPAWIS party list
 
“Rice rationing and marking systems, a sure sign of crisis!”-KMP
Gloria should not wait until food riots in Africa and India also happen here
 
            The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) decried the continued denial of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime that there is indeed a rice crisis that is concretely manifested by a surge in rice prices and increased rice importation. Now the regime has even resorted to rice rationing to stave off the crisis. The regime should address this decisively now and should not wait until the food riots in Haiti , Cameroon and India among others
 
            According to Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano, chairman of KMP and concurrent president of ANAKPAWIS party list, “now we see longer and longer  lines of people queuing  for NFA rice, but the regime has drastically reduced the ration for each consumer from 3 kilogram per person to just one. They are now even using marking systems like indelible ink, IDs and pentel pens to control the buying of rice,”
 
            “They are rationing rice because the regime knows that we have a very tight supply. But the measures they are using to address these are either wrong or mere palliatives that can never solve this chronic problem. Just take Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’ s 3 phase action plan, her first phase is to secure rice supply but her means of doing this is through importation. This may assuage the tight supply problem in the short term but this will just make us more dependent on imports rather than our own rice production,” said Mariano.
 
            “Her second phase of ensuring proper distribution is short sighted and only concentrates on NFA rice but does not touch a major factor in the rice crisis which is the rice cartel. As long as the same liberalization policies of the regime are applied, the cartel will not be dismantled and they will just grow stronger in controlling the rice industry,” added the peasant leader.
 
            “Her third phase of enforcing laws to protect people against price gauging and corruption is connected with the second. Meaning the cartel must first be dismantled to ensure this or at least impose a price control, to protect consumers. These palliatives are no match for a chronic problem that the ultimate solution is the implementation of genuine agrarian reform,” ended Mariano. # # #