THE Marcos administration is saddled with the problem of a looming sugar shortage in the market, which has shown its first signs with the skyrocketing prices of sugar. Whether artificially made or not, this shortage manifests itself in the real prices of sugar from P90 per kilo to P100 per kilo in various markets, which are high compared to prices last year.
Any right-thinking secretary of agriculture, who is now the President himself, will have had advance notice on the rising price of sugar, rice, flour, vegetables, and would act accordingly. It seems Bongbong Marcos is not remiss in this respect, although days before the sugar mess happened, DA Undersecretary Kristine Evangelista said they were conducting an inventory of sugar supply nationwide.
The real problem surfaced when the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) published in its website SRA Order No. 4 dated August 9 which authorized the importation of 300,000 metric tons of sugar. Industry players know that this would amount to some P9 billion.
‘… there are clashing big business interests involved in the decision to import or not to import, and if importation is inevitable, by how much?’
The stakes were made higher when Press Secretary Trixie Angeles in a press conference called “Sugar Order No. 4” an illegal document, and the group behind it faked the President’s signature, and that an investigation is ongoing, and further, “heads will roll” presumably after such investigation is finished.
The document, which was taken down by the SRA from its official website and printed copies were burned or shredded as if it never existed, had the signature of Dr. Leocadio S. Sebastian for the President and DA Secretary, Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica, Roland Beltran and Aurelio Gerardo Valderrama Jr.
The press secretary talked about a group of criminal minds having the guts and temerity to fake the signature of the President, a signature that did not appear in digital copies of the Order now shown on social media — and soon their heads will roll. But such “fake signature” which made the order, in the words of the press secretary, “illegal,” is in fact not in the document signed by Sebastian “for the President.” Incidentally, a memorandum from Executive Secretary Vic Rodriguez allows Sebastian to represent the President-DA Secretary in bodies, councils and committees where Marcos is chairman. Poor Dr. Leo Sebastian, Ph. D., had to resign posthaste to redeem his name and the reputation he built for decades in the science and agriculture community.
Many things are lacking in the explanations given by Secretary Angeles about this case, thus several questions need to be answered. It has been a full weekend since she said there is a Palace probe on this mess, but who is doing the investigating? She also said the investigation continues even with the resignation of Undersecretary Sebastian, so who else are being grilled? Will Sebastian’s resignation absolve him of any responsibility for this mess?
This early, the public sees only a few clear things in this case that the Palace deliberately stirs to create a vortex of confusion and muddle the issues. One is that there are clashing big business interests involved in the decision to import or not to import, and if importation is inevitable, by how much? President Bongbong Marcos might have taken a position, and then changed his mind, and “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.”