What do you call spilled sugar?
A mess.
That seems to be where the Sugar Regulatory Board is in right now, following Sugar Order 4 that got two SRB officials submitting their resignation letters via Executive Secretary Victor Rodriguez last week.
Speaking of… a third one has resigned also as of this writing, turning his letter in to ES Vic.
The former spokesperson of now-President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been eerily quiet about it — unless my trawling (not trolling!) skills are deplorable, and I cannot get anything worth using to see his side of the story.
There doesn’t seem to be much information about the guy online. Even his wiki information is massively edited, or so it appears.
All we know is that he is a graduate of the University of Santo Tomas, that he is the managing lawyer of Rodriguez & Partners Law Firm and is the president of the Quezon City Trial Lawyers League.
Such a private guy held a most challenging role, fending off plenty of critics and bashers out for Marcos blood, so to speak. This is why he is best known for being a staunch BBM defender then, and now, as “little President.”
Well, just weeks into the presidency, rumbles came not from the bowels of the earth, but from around Malacañang, where factions allegedly were causing cracks.
A rumor of ES offering to resign his post was quickly quashed — nope, Rodriguez was definitely staying put.
But then, the sugar spilled and people resigned, and ES Vic could not be reached for comment.
On one hand, the Congress investigation — the first one under BBM rule — is delving deep into an issue that turns out to be deeper than it looks.
Even as some industry members expressed support for the sugar order that the Palace denied was authorized by the President, questions have arisen about why it went this far in the first place.
SO 4 allows the importation of 300,000 metric tons of sugar, sparking fears of a shortage. However, congressmen have revealed that there are huge stocks of the commodity yet unreleased.
Prior to this, President Marcos said the country can really use an importation, but not as much as 300,000 metric tons, maybe half the amount, when the time comes.
So now we know this much: There was a previous sugar order that would have allowed the entry of 200,000 metric tons, but there was a “temporary restraining order… issued by a court to block the import,” a report on a hearing at the House of Representatives with the Luzon Federation of Sugarcane Growers and Associations and the Philippine Sugar Millers Association said.
Apparently, an additional supply of sugar will “help bring down domestic prices.”
There is, they said, a need for “imported sugar” to meet market demand.
Right now, too much speculation is putting the bitter, the sour and the spicy into the sweet.
We can do without the tasteless talk. We can reject the sugarcoating. We just want not just for our curiosity to be satisfied, but to understand better.