Lost in the national consciousness following the kidnapping of former President Rodrigo Duterte is the pillage of the national treasury. The government coffers, have been hemorrhaging since the attempt to change the Constitution through peoples Initiative.
That did not however prosper because of the public’s uproar but the Congress leadership learned the art of how to source and divert funds and even empowering themselves to program and disburse the funds which in the past were the functions of government departments and the agencies under them.
Ayuda and AKAP are among the tools used in the daytime robbery of the treasury. We suspect that the funds had been depleted otherwise the government leadership will not resort to scrounging money from PhilHealth, PDIC, Maharlika Investment Funds including the gold deposits in the Central Bank to name a few.
Finance Secretary Ralph Recto’s lame excuse why the leadership allows the virtual raid of the resources government financial institutions and trust funds insults financial gurus. He simply asserts that they are using idle funds to better use. That of course is a lot of bull sh_t.
That is as far as money is concerned. The other issue is food security. The Department of Agriculture tragically failed in enhancing agricutltural productivity. Instead of incentivising farmers to produce more the DA drastically reduced tariffs on rice imports.
Aye there’s the rub! Let us not lost sight of this impending problem. The arrest of Duterte might just be a smoke screen and might even be used as a reason why the country is in economic doldrum.
