During his campaign, one of Marcos II’s most ambitious promises is to lower the price of rice to P20. He claimed that this will be on top of his agenda once he won. But just like all those who came before him, this promise just vanished to thin air. NDF-Bikol is one with the Bikolano masses and the whole Filipino nation in holding the regime accountable to its mandate and in demanding affordable and fair prices for rice and other basic needs.

After his first three months in office, Marcos II have not taken any step to solve the skyrocketing prices of rice and other commodities. Instead, he continued Duterte’s Rice Tariffication Law which further weakened the local rice producers’ capacities and heightened the country’s dependence on importation. Filipino rice farmers have gone bankrupt. Last 2020, after a year of RTL implementation, farmers all over the country lost more than P8 billion. But despite the surge in rice importation and the sacrifice of the peasantry’s sources of living, its price failed to go down. Rice prices remain at P40 to P60 in local markets.

Also, farmers have not felt the promised aid that should have come from the taxes collected from the imported rice. In Bikol, only 51,102 registered small rice farmers are purportedly target beneficiaries of the P5,000 agricultural aid. But if thoroughly examined, what percentage of the total number of Bikolano farmers are qualified for the aid? Seven out of 10 peasants do not own the land that they till. All of them who makes up the majority of the agricultural sector are not covered by the program.

Worse, instead of recognition, threats and intimidation await individuals and organizations who took it upon themselves to help their fellow downtrodden. Just recently, reports about police harassment against a Bikolano who tried selling rice at a lower prince in Ligao City, Albay broke the news. All he wanted was to reduce the severity of his kababayans’ burdens. But the police rapidly assailed and even accused him of being on the payroll of an opposition politician. Even without violation of any law, he was ordered to stop selling affordable rice.

What the state and its armed forces want to do is very clear: aside from leaving the poor to die from hunger, they also want to hinder all the masses’ own initiatives and prevent them from ever recovering from crisis. In these conditions, NDF-Bikol calls on all Bikolano masses to continue the struggle for their democratic rights including the fulfillment of the promised P20 per kilo of rice and affordable prices. Concrete action, and not just grandiose words, is what the starving nation needs.