News Briefs: December 20, 2018

Don’t scare people about rice prices, DA chief told

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol should stop scaring the people about rice prices because of the tariffication bill that is expected to become a law soon, and should instead devote his energy to helping farmers become productive, according to Sen. Francis Pangilinan.

The rice tariffication measure would remove quantitative restrictions and instead impose a tariff on rice imports and would effectively allow anybody to bring in the country’s staple food.

Sponsors of the measure said this was expected to bring down prices.

It also gives the National Food Authority (NFA) a diminished role in rice importation and tasks it to just buy rice from local farmers for the country’s buffer stock.

Piñol said on Tuesday that the NFA would stop selling its subsidized rice once all approved imports were depleted.

Pangilinan, a former presidential adviser on food security, said in a statement that Piñol was acting as if he was already counting the people who would die from an approaching storm. —Leila B. Salaverria

Napoles cites threats in appeal but offers no proof

Janet Lim-Napoles, convicted mastermind of the pork barrel scam, has again cited “grave threats to her life and security” but offered no proof in appealing the Sandiganbayan’s order for her to be sent to a women’s prison in Mandaluyong City, according to the Ombudsman.

In her reply to the prosecutors’ objection to her appeal last week, Napoles repeated the claim that “she had experienced threats” when she was held at the Correctional Institution for Women from April 2015 to May 2017 for the crime of serious illegal detention.

The reply, dated Dec. 14, was released to reporters on Wednesday. Napoles, who is currently held at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology jail at Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City, was found guilty of plunder by the Sandiganbayan for pocketing the P124.5-million pork allocations of former Sen. Bong Revilla. —Vince F. Nonato