Editorials:

Illustration by Jimbo Albano

Notes on an Asean tragedy

IT’S a shade too insensitive to say that there must be a silver lining in that powerful cyclone that flattened villages in the key rice-producing Irrawaddy delta in Burma—or Myanmar—at the weekend, leaving a death toll of at least 15,000 people, per latest accounts, but still rising.

And yet, in that tragedy the people of Southeast Asia may yet find anew their common soul as they reach out to each other in these times of crisis; first marked by the soaring prices of rice that is a staple for their peoples, and now, this natural disaster in Burma.

Only a few days ago, Burma had served notice it was willing to join a proposed cartel of rice-exporting members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), led by chief proponent Thailand, sparking howls of protest and friendly reminders from the rice importers in the regional bloc—like the Philippines—that fretted, both over the impact of this setup (rice, like oil in Opec, could then rise to even more stratospheric rates) and the dismaying sense of being treated just like any ordinary customer by your supposedly good neighbors.

And then Nargis struck, and things changed.

On Tuesday the head of the Thai rice exporters held out the possibility that rice-exporting Burma may be forced to import rice this year after crops were wiped out by Nargis, “potentially adding further pressure to global food supplies as prices gain,” as a Bloomberg account put it.

The cyclone, billed as possibly Southeast Asia’s deadliest natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami, had come just as rice futures in Chicago rose to a record last month. This, after some exporters like Vietnam served notice they would limit shipments, even as demand gained. Vietnam and the other exporters had said their first priority was to stabilize supply in their own constituencies before considering good neighborliness; and the 12-year inflation high of over 20 percent in that Southeast Asian country in April had prompted some analysts to say it would keep curbing shipments in response to the price increases.

According to Bloomberg, quoting Mr. Chookiat Ophaswongse of the Thai rice exporters’ group, Burma would probably have exported about 400,000 metric tons (A “tentative” April forecast from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization even has it higher at 500,000 mt) of rice this year because of soaring prices, up from normal shipments of less than 100,000 tons. The storm is thus seen to “jeopardize” exports.

With rice, the staple food for half the world, surging more than 90 percent over the past year—touching a record $25.07 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade on April 24, says Bloomberg—Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, would have continued to make a killing. Especially considering that the same factors that caused the price surge were seen to continue—the extreme weather in many countries affecting crops and crimping supply, the rising demand overall for rice, and the global food-price surges partly because of the shifts in farm use for biofuels instead of food.

But then, as we stated at the start of this editorial, sometimes good things emerge from the worst of times. On Tuesday Thailand declared it was dropping plans to create the Southeast Asian rice cartel that would have, à la Opec, fixed the price of rice over concerns of food security.

The proposal to create the cartel was raised by Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej in order to, per a Bloomberg report, give rice producers greater control over rice prices that tripled since December. The concept was shot down by Filipino senators, including Sen. Edgardo Angara, who heads the agriculture committee, as well as some Thai rice exporters.

On Tuesday the tide had changed. “We are not talking about setting up a rice cartel,” Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama was quoted as saying after meeting ambassadors from six rice-exporting countries in Asia. “If Thailand sets up a rice cartel and fixes a price, that will make matters worse and worsen food security.”

As an alternative, Thailand proposed holding a meeting on rice in the next couple of months—one that engages such top Asian exporters as India, China, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia and Pakistan on issues of productivity. Here at home, that same theme, i.e., focusing once and for all on productivity and rice self-sufficiency, had been the same tack taken by the Executive after critics pilloried her administration’s policy of unbridled rice importation just because it was deemed cheaper to buy from the world market than growing it locally.

The exporting countries, per Thailand’s latest concept, would then just discuss the sharing of technology, market information and price information.

The Thai foreign minister, replying to a question, was quoted as having said, “We are sympathetic to all human beings, not just the Filipinos,” who complained the loudest about the rice cartel.

Whatever it is that caused the Thai turnaround, the good point in this is that Asean members are now appreciating the wisdom of having the regional bloc. Beyond the officialese, the Southeast Asians are seeing the human face of tragedy and suffering, and, while responding to their own national interests, are nonetheless instinctively responding to the calls for help from those in dire need, be they Burmese or Filipinos.

While they are at it, the Asean members, meanwhile, would do well to keep prodding their counterparts in the Burmese junta to provide the outside world an honest, comprehensive picture of the real situation in that benighted land. A regime that has thrived for decades on suppressing information both into and out of its borders, while repressing its own people, doesn’t inspire confidence that it will level with outsiders seeking to help the victims of Nargis.

For the longest time, the Asean has failed to prove that its policy of engaging the junta if Burma were a member will yield more effective results than if Burma were an outsider. In this crisis, Asean members may yet find the means to pressure that repressive regime to finally do right by its own people. Virtual slavery in multibillion-dollar projects that enriched only the military elite, schools closed for decades, starvation wages, no democratic space—these had formed part of the junta legacy way before Nargis struck. The man-made disaster had long preceded the natural, and in this confluence of events, the Asean may yet find that good neighborliness entails knowing the difference between simple humanitarian aid and prompting change for the long-term good.

IT’S a shade too insensitive to say that there must be a silver lining in that powerful cyclone that flattened villages in the key rice-producing Irrawaddy delta in Burma—or Myanmar—at the weekend, leaving a death toll of at least 15,000 people, per latest accounts, but still rising.

I am an avid cycling enthusiast. As one, I have been up to Antipolo and to Tagaytay a countless number of times. But I guess the ultimate dream of a local cyclist is to go up to Baguio, as it offers one of the most challenging courses, to say the least, a cyclist can embark on.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”—George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 31, 2001

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