Pythons with indigestion

Have you ever seen a python swallow an entire carabao?

I recall seeing photos of a python or two that managed to creep up on a carabao and swallow their victim whole. That by itself would certainly give them indigestion, immobilize them for a couple of days and make them vulnerable to other predators such as men. Interestingly, the one I read about actually impaled it self on the carabao horns that it could not digest fast enough.

That’s the same situation that local and foreign business groups seem to find themselves in. A whole bunch of property developers involved in developing Industrial Zones, Business Parks and the likes were advised by a little lady in government that they would do well to buy up properties and start preparing for the influx of Japanese companies that are leaving China and coming soon to the Philippines. The business groups were also assured that because of the “pro-business” managers of President Duterte, there was no doubt that more and more investors will be coming into the Philippines and all of them will need factory sites, warehousing etc.

To be fair, the little lady in government has a good track record for her forecasts and seems to be respected by tenants and investors in industrial zones. It was almost as good as “Insider Trading” and no one wanted to be left behind in staking out their claims. Unfortunately none of them apparently read or remembered the apostolic warnings in 1 Timothy 6:10

“For the love of money is the root of all evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from their faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Yes, they are filled with grief because the last thing they expected was for President Rodrigo Duterte to appoint the militant farmer Ka Rafael Mariano to be the Secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform! If that was not bad enough, one of Secretary Mariano’s first acts was to suspend ALL LAND CONVERSION applications by declaring an indefinite moratorium!

According to my source most, if not all of the speculators have been having sleepless nights because they spent hundred millions to buy up so much land that was originally FOR AGRICULTURAL purpose. If Secretary Mariano sticks to his guns, their applications or plans for land conversion could be “killed” or blocked permanently, while their purchase and acquisition could and should be investigated for possible violations of the original Agrarian Reform Law. If they choose to avoid all that, the speculators will have to wait another six years to apply for land conversion when Mariano will no longer in office. What will ultimately kill the “Python” will be their failure to cash in their investments, and failure to unload or sell off all the land they bought, and being impaled with investigations on the manner of their acquisition.

The fact that local and foreign corporations confidently buy up so much land, fully convinced that they can convert Agricultural Land to Commercial/Industrial land at the DAR is proof enough that there is a syndicate or group of corrupt people inside DAR who have sabotaged agrarian reform and agricultural land retention. Because of this, Sec. Mariano must review past conversions of critically important agricultural lands converted into housing developments, golf courses, etc.

At the end of the day, the progress of the rich and powerful business groups based in Makati should never be at the expense of agriculture, farming communities and our food security. What corporations treat as cheap lands always comes at a price and they are never the ones paying the price. They only profit from it. Congratulations to Secretary Rafael Mariano.

As for all the speculators, here’s a very apt parable given by Jesus Christ: Luke 12: 16-21 “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat and drink and be merry.”

“But God said to him, ‘ You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get your what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be for whoever stores things for himself but is not rich towards God.”

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It is truly the fault of “Government” While listening to a number of radio commentators, I tried to figure out why “Government Officials” generally cabinet secretaries always get blamed for problems such as traffic etc. After a few minutes I realized that part of the problem is that cabinet members by default always makes promises (often more than politicians) but fail to manage expectations. They also fail to consider and point out enough that certain things are beyond their control. More than half of our problem with traffic is created or caused at the local government level, unfortunately radio commentators always target national officials and rarely give the same dose of medicine to mayors and local traffic managers. Our friends in radio should be fair enough by spreading the blame around, especially when the fault is often more locally generated.

In relation to this, our “Remedyo culture” or “make do” management approach in the national government is one major reason for failure. Government officials “make do” with “FORCE MULTIPLIERS” instead of funding, finding and training real cops and real traffic officers! The PNP rely on Tanods and security guards to be force multipliers. The MMDA and the DOTr rely on LGU traffic enforcers and Tanod as force multipliers and I would wager that the number of force multipliers are three times greater than real Police officers, real Traffic enforcers etc. So what happens is the national government and officials propagate incompetence, inefficiency and rely on people they have no real control and supervision over. It makes no difference if local enforcers are now placed under the DOTr or IACT, as long as they don’t pay for their salaries and cannot terminate force multipliers, they have no control over them.

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