By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
The unfolding real life drama entitled, The impeachment of VP Sara, had captured the attention of the entire country. The riveting Congress-novela has a lot of twists and turns, one would eagerly await what comes up the next day.
Many of the actors are superstars, some are would-be superstars, some would soon become has-beens, some are serving as extras who just need to smile, laugh, or smirk as the scene requires. Add to that the kibitzers who are out of the stage play – they just talk about it; sometimes they fight with each other but without personally seeing each other, as they do it in what is called social media.
At times the fight is full of false passion giving rise to a smattering of fake news, which is gleefully-indulged in by some. The novela is so intense, it even dragged the unsuspecting Supreme Court into the fray.
Ironically, some of those kibitzers are the ones being paid, not the main actors. Bizarre! Bizarre!
Meanwhile, the main character glided out of sight temporarily, not heard of for quite some time now, reportedly cooling off somewhere beyond the deep blue sea, partly passing over the West Philippine Sea. The WPS by the way, was declared non-existent by a known character, but only a secondary actor of the telenovela. Shame! Shame!
While the congress-novela is climbing up the ratings chart, it consigned all other stories under the dust bin of almost insignificance. Even the start of the actual campaign period was somehow overshadowed by it.
One of those zarzuelas that had its gala opening last Feb 3, 2025 just passed without a whimper. Oh, it is still now showing. It did not rise one rating point, but it would have had it opened much earlier.
This is entitled, Declaration of Food Security Emergency. Since there is no food shortage, and therefore no real emergency, the government slapped itself hard for this. Embarassing!
But this was not noticed by the onlookers, thanks to the engaging novela.
The “emergency” is actually intended only for rice, but as it sounds, it is food in general. This is doubly embarrassing. It is quite unfathomable that there is a National Price Control Council that can’t think or act rationally. NPCC is made up of robots, or grade schoolers? Maybe NPCC actors are not well-schooled or just following a flawed script.
Add to that the inability to enforce a maximum ceiling price of imported rice at PhP55.00 or PhP58.00/kg among our retailers and we see a council that is so ineffective, it is as if there are no really members of it. Pitiful. Pitiful.
Obviously, there are hands that can not be bitten. And so there are actors behind the scene that make the show running even if the script is badly written and beyond good taste.
The bad show could have been prevented with an honest-to-goodness implementation of existing laws by secondary actors.
Where will our goal of rice self-sufficiency go? The farmers are just the extras, where they should be the lead actors.
And now they just uncovered smuggled onions, and other agri-products. Whoa. Onion farmers, the supposed main actors, are loudly protesting imploring that the government should not import the product at the moment since harvesting just started this month. The cost of red onion in the market now is more than PhP 200.00 per kilo. And we are all affected, whatever region we are in.
It is not far-fetched for sub-tropical vegetables to be in the smuggling script soon. Just today, the cost of large potato is running more than PhP115.00 per kilo in the market. Earlier, it was only about PhP70.00.
Another upcoming zarzuela: “Toll fees” in Baguio. Here, motorists will be reportedly assessed a fee of around P200.00 if they enter the central business district. Maybe 13 or so streets will be affected if it will push through, according to sources. The script is being finalized. Abangan.
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