By Amado P. Macasaet
Malaya
Malaya
‘Poor people will not die of hunger and disease if the government teaches them the virtue of helping themselves.’
Jerry Acuzar
It is not just the fact that President Aquino cancelled the lease of 20,000 hectares of land to Jerry Acuzar, brother-in-law of Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa.
What matters a lot in the lease is the denial of poor people to have an opportunity at life by cultivating government-owned land.
It also matters a lot that the cancellation was made a year after President Aquino took his oath on June 30, 2010. The lease was granted by the Arroyo administration in 2009. Was the grant made when Benigno S. Aquino III was already known as running for president? If that were the case, Ochoa allowed his brother-in-law to sleep with the enemy that was Gloria Arroyo. We suppose that the lease was granted when Pnoy was a senator. Therefore, Ochoa did not have anything to do with it.
After he was appointed Executive Secretary, the lease acquired political color. So it was cancelled, according to Malacañang, two years later. Why did it take that long for the Palace to act? And why was the cancellation announced only after Jun Lozada, a pronounced victim of the Arroyo regime, exposed the lease?
Would Malacañang have the lease if Lozada had not divulged it?
We will never know because the Palace did not divulge the exact date of the grant in 2009. Neither was the date of the cancellation mentioned.
In any case, that should be behind us now.
What makes us almost throw up is the fact that in this country, only the well-connected get favors from leaders of the state. Acuzar’s lifestyle will hardly be affected by the lease cancellation.
The poor, particularly those in squatter colonies, would have had some food in their stomachs if the 20,000 hectares of land leased to Acuzar were assigned instead to the poor for cultivation.
We have no knowledge of the terrain of the land. However, anything can grow on it. The poor in rural and urban areas could have benefited from it if the land was used to produce food.
Doing that would have been better than the billions of pesos given by the state in what it calls “conditional cash transfer”. The CCT is a dole. It does not encourage the poor to improve their lot by the sweat of their brows.
I personally believe that the government should stand firm on two policies ignoring however it affects the political leaders of the President and his allies. It is important for the leadership to encourage the poor to improve their lot with the help of the state.
The help however, should not be direct subsidies that do not help them work for themselves. We never tire saying that political gains in the form of subsidies is a direct or indirect bribe that gets politicians elected. That is the reason the voters elect lawmakers who may be unfit.
One proof is not merely the election of the unfit, the ignorant. The worst proof is the scandal that attends the use of pork barrel funds, euphemistically labeled as Priority Development Assistance Fund. “A rose is a rose by whatever name it is called.” Theft of taxpayers money is theft whatever it is called.
I thought I heard people quoting from the Bible saying do not give the hungry man fish to eat; teach him how to fish. In other words, give him the means he can use to catch fish for food.
The sad story of the poverty in this country is the fact that there are a few million hectares of government land that have remained idle for centuries. A good portion of this land should be good for crops that the poor can plant with government assistance instead of a direct dole.
I once had the opportunity to discuss with Danding Cojuangco his idea about land reform when it was expanded by then President Corazon Aquino who was his first cousin. Danding told me the better approach was to give the landless the necessary tools to work on idle state land instead of parceling out large commercial estates into uneconomic sizes of three to five hectares.
His main point was that if cultivation of state land by the landless succeeds, production can double because the output will not affect what is efficiently produced by large commercial land. He said he could not openly propose the idea because Cory was his first cousin.
It turns out Danding was right.
The country is importing rice. Farmers who starve go to Manila and other highly urbanized centers to take a chainman’s chance at getting a job.
They become a big social problem instead.
If the lease of Acuzar’s company covering 20,000 hectares had been given to the poor for cultivation, the country may not be importing at all.
Politicians say their hearts bleed for the poor. But it is they who bleed the poor by developing a higher dependence on subsidies that give them votes, not food.
Man’s instinct is to recover expenses in business and in politics. National and local candidates spend millions of pesos to get a reasonable assurance to win. Election of state leaders has long been a function of money and popularity. The situation will only get worse. It will never get better.
The pork is an example of how politicians steal taxpayers’ money. Nearly all of them get a share of the pork which, as described, is for development assistance. The lawmakers get heir own pound of flesh from every project funded by the PDAF.
In the case of Janet Napoles, the bulk of the pork went straight into the pockets of several lawmakers.
The pork barrel must be abolished. The money should go to the Department of Agriculture to expand farm production. Or to the Department of Health for the expansion of the Philippine General Hospital and for the construction or modernization of provincial, city and municipal hospitals or clinics.
Poor people will not die of hunger and disease if the government teaches them the virtue of helping themselves.
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email: amadomacasaet@yahoo.com
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