President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. promised Filipinos affordable rice, the staple food of the nation, at a pocket-friendly P20 per kilo. Now, his administration finds itself grappling with a most pungent scandal.

Officials of the National Food Authority, or NFA, the supposed guardians of the Filipino rice bowl, stand accused of pilfering rice stocks meant for the public plate and feeding them to private traders for a tidy profit.

It’s a scene ripped from a Manila melodrama. A total of 75,000 bags of government rice had supposedly vanished from NFA warehouses, only to reappear on the black market, marked up by 100 percent.

Agriculture Secretary Francisco Laurel is trying to play Hamlet in this bureaucratic food fight. He had urged NFA officials to take a leave of absence, promising a quick investigation.

As things would turn out, the Office of the Ombudsman had made Laurel’s job just a wee bit easier as it ordered the preventive suspension of 139 officials and employees of the NFA over the allegedly anomalous rice sale.

Of course, Laurel had to immediately implement the suspension order, including those on NFA Administrator Roderico Bioco and acting Assistant Administrator for Operations John Robert Hermano.

Laurel revealed that he had been in constant communication with the Ombudsman since the scandal broke out, vowing not to allow “corruption of any kind” at the DA and the agencies under it.

The brouhaha stemmed from a revelation made by NFA Assistant Administrator for Operations Lemuel Pagayunan to the state-managed People’s Television Network that the bags of rice were sold to private firms without the benefit of public bidding.

Dilly-dallying on alleged corruption, especially one with rice at the center of contention, is not an option for anyone, much less Laurel. Thus, also ordered to take leaves of absence, along with the NFA top brass, were several regional managers and warehouse supervisors all across the country.

The question is, will the DA panel of internal investigators continue with its probe into the controversy, or would it give way to the Ombudman’s battery of probers to determine the administrative and criminal culpability of the NFA officials?

Before the suspension, Bioco had filed for a leave of absence, Laurel said, with the DA’s internal probe going as far back as 2019 at the very least.

If true, the allegation that NFA rice was sold to traders at P25 per kilo after being acquired from farmers as palay for P23 a kilo is unconscionable, more so if the same rice was later sold to the public for at least P50 per kilo.

This sordid affair comes as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. tries to source cheap rice from abroad while shoring up local production by providing farmers whatever support the government can muster, certainly not at the level that other nations give their farmers.

In January, Marcos secured rice deals during a visit to Vietnam, under a memorandum of understanding on rice trade cooperation between Hanoi and Manila. The deal should assure rice stocks amid the El Niño dry spell and other weather disturbances local rice production volume.

At the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-Australia Summit this week, Marcos tried to secure more rice importation options by agreeing with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet for the two countries to increase rice trade between them.

This scandal may be seen as a microcosm of the Philippines’ larger woes. Corruption, like a particularly persistent weed, chokes the life out of progress if allowed unpunished. Until the NFA affair is exposed in all its grimy glory, with the culprits held accountable and justice served, Filipinos can kiss their P20 rice dreams goodbye.

It isn’t about whether the rice will reach the table but whether it will be devoured by the hungry mouths of the people or the insatiable greed of a few.

If the Ombudsman had to suspend 139 NFA officials and personnel, maybe corruption had become so ingrained and pervasive in this agency that Marcos should consider abolishing it altogether.