3rd District Congressman Arthur Yap

The recent attacks hurled against incumbent third district Congressman Arthur Yap only showed the desperation of dead-end challengers who failed to find any flaw in the neophyte politician's brand of public service.

Yap have been the subject of recycled issues on rice importation and the procurement of state-of-the-art ice-making machines recently coming out in paid media exposure.

Yap's supporters rally behind the congressman and assured the congressman that they are mature enough to discern which are fabricated issues and which are truth.

The constituents of third district lament that desperate politicians unleashed political barkers who uses the radio airlines and the local tabloids in making it appear that

Yap must be blamed in what had been presumed as over-importation of rice years ago resulting to tons of rice rotting in the NFA warehouses.

However, the political barkers overlooked that Congressman Yap already answered the issue after the 2010 SONA when the same was raised.

A lawyer from the ranks of the agriculture sector in the past even explained that the volume of rice to be imported is not solely decided by the secretary of agriculture.

It is actually decided upon by an inter-agency committee composed of heads of the Department of Budget and Management, Department of Finance, Department of Trade and Industry, Land Bank of the Philippines, and private sector representatives.

These officials, obviously, has no stake in the 3rd district congressional derby. It must be the reason that they had been spared from the issue.

From the point of view of a lawyer, who requested anonymity, Congressman Yap cannot be made to comment on the current status of rice importation, since the former agriculture secretary has “no access on government data used for rice importation during the last two years”.

“In fact, this issue had already been dwarfed by the latest report on the biggest haul of 42-million-peso worth of smuggled rice from Vietnam and earlier the 420,000 bags of smuggled rice from India worth 500 million pesos, both at the port of Subic. These had been recently intercepted by the Bureau of Customs at the Port of Subic,” according to the lawyer.

The lady lawyer said, these political barkers hould have researched further to make a credible commentary on an issue.

On the other hand, DSWD had also been mirepresented in what the political barker bragged that Loboc is near zero poverty-incidence level as the reason that there is no recipient of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program in the town. The statement however is far from accurate if based on DSWD record, radio listeners said.