The story being peddled by Mr. Henry Lim Bon Liong of SL Agritech, distributor of the infamous ?bansot? hybrid rice, is hilarious if only it were not costing farmers and the Agriculture Department billions of pesos.

Lim Bon Liong must be joking when he says he is not the ?preferred supplier? of the department; it just so happens that his company is the ?market leader.? The fact is that he has gotten the lion?s share of the department?s subsidies that according to news reports amounted to P551 million in 2004, P780 million in 2005, P1.6 billion in 2006, and P2.5 billion in 2007. Indeed it is a big mystery.

With the complaints we have been hearing about his hybrid seeds all these years capped by the recent debacle of his SL-8 hybrid which produced the stunted rice in many farms in Nueva Ecija and elsewhere, it would seem that SL-Agritech is the ?market leader? not because his hybrid rice is superior but because of other reasons.

Lim Bon Liong insists that his hybrid seeds are the ?farmers? choice? but this claim is disputable. Apparently SL Agritech hybrid rice is preferred because it is being pushed by agriculture officials for reasons we can only guess.

Those in the know say it is obvious that SL is preferred by the department because of the fact that SL hybrid seeds are displayed and stored in DA offices and drop centers apparently under a special arrangement with the department. They claim that farmers buying SL hybrid seeds have an easier time getting the P1,500 subsidy per bag of hybrid seed.

Another funny claim being made by Lim Bon Liong was the stunted growth of the rice using his hybrid variety which he imported from China was because of the extraordinary cold weather.

Experts are laughing at this claim because other hybrid rice varieties like Philrice?s ?Mestizo,? Pioneers PHB 71, Bio Seeds and many others were not affected by the ?extraordinary cold weather.? Somebody should tell Lim Bon Liong that Nueva Ecija and most of the country indeed experience cold weather in December and January.

What we would like to see is for Lim Bon Liong to dissemble when he appears before the House of Representatives in the investigation asked for by Nueva Ecija Rep. Edno Joson.

Nueva Ecija is the top rice-producing province in the country and Joson?s comprovincianos were the most affected by what appears as the low quality hybrid seeds supplied by SL Agritech. Joson might not be amused at Lim Bon Liong?s jokes when it is the livelihood of rice farmers which is at stake.

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The representative of an alleged witness quoted in the controversial World Bank report unexpectedly showed up at the Senate hearing last week in a move which we hope would be emulated by the mysterious characters whose statements make up most of that report.

Trix Lim came forward before the Senate to officially deny that his client, Japanese contractor Tomatu Suzuka, had ever met with the First Gentleman to discuss public works projects. He also denied statements that were attributed to him and to Suzuka that are reportedly incorporated into the World Bank report.

We do not personally know who Lim is. And we have no way of assessing how credible his statements before the Senate are.

But Lim is definitely one step ahead of all the other characters quoted in that report. Since Lim had the guts to show his face in nationwide television and to be grilled by senators, he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

The same cannot be said about the other characters and personalities referred to in the report.

 Especially those sources dubbed by World Bank investigators as ?confidential? and those who are hiding behind mysterious coded names. Even World Bank probers had to admit they have not seen the faces of many of these enigmatic whistle-blowers.

  And since we have not seen their faces nor heard their voices, the World Bank must understand why Filipinos, for the most part, are skeptical towards its report and towards the investigation process upon which it was based.

This is the Philippines after all. Here virtually nobody loses an election fairly. We only have those who won and those who were cheated. The same thing goes for project bidders. We have a profusion of sore losers who will invariably complain if they lose in bidding.

It should be noted that in an extensive article on the alleged report, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has called attention to the fact that ?most of the interviewees [in the investigation by the World Bank] were contractors with rival vested interests? who offered ?a wild mix of information they claimed to know directly, a lot of impressions and opinions they hold, and mere rumors they heard regarding how public works contracts in the Philippines are supposedly riddled with corruption?.

The PCIJ also warned that these hearsay accounts were apparently accepted by the World Bank and minimal efforts were exerted to corroborate the stories told by the interviewees, most of which were ?contractors with rival interests.?

The World Bank must accept that the report is suffering from a major credibility problem, as pointed out in the PCIJ article.

And it must move fast before the public dismisses it completely as nothing more than a compilation of a litany of complaints from losing bidders.

There are two things it can do.

One would be to officially release the report to the public. We understand why the World Bank has been very adamant about making that report public. Maybe, they have also noted the serious infirmities of its own investigation processes and methods that were pointed out by the PCIJ article.

But is has very little other options. If it keeps the report shrouded in a veil of secrecy and mystery, the portions leaked out to media will continue to be subjected to intense criticisms. The World Bank will be unable to explain and justify its reliance on the statements of losing bidders and anonymous cyber sources. In the process, it could lose the credibility war by default.

The other thing it can do is to let its secret sources do a ?Trix Lim?.

What we mean is for them to step forward, show their faces to the public, identify themselves and their motives and tell their story subject to the cross-examination of our lawmakers.

By doing so, we, the public, can judge for ourselves how credible the World Bank report is based on our own assessment of the identity and motives of the confidential witnesses.

The World Bank cannot run away from this responsibility anymore. Filipinos are already fighting among themselves as a result of that controversial report that was leaked piecemeal to media and some political personalities, as Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. had warned.

It would be quite a shame if that quarrel among Filipinos would have been merely triggered by a report based on the statements of mysterious characters and losing bidders.

The World Bank itself should encourage these mysterious characters to do a ?Trix Lim?.

Otherwise, the impression could grow that the World Bank does not believe that these characters and their stories would not be able to stand the scrutiny of the Senate and the public.

That would have very damning consequences.

There could be other reasons why the World Bank does not want to make its sources public.

We respect those reasons.

But it will have to accept the consequences. You see, we, Filipinos, may be poor and loans from international funding agencies is something that we need.

But we are definitely not stupid.