Two years is still a lot of time

Lame duck? No, P-Noy isn’t a lame duck president just yet. He turned emotional and uncomfortably paranoid towards the end of his SONA because he is apparently taking personally the fierce and relentless criticism the past few months over DAP as well as the other shortcomings of his administration.

His defensive stance is understandable. His only real legacy, so far, his anti corruption promise, is in danger of being lost. True, we still can’t accuse P-Noy of stealing a centavo, but the DAP and PDAF revelations seem to indicate some lapses in judgment that goes against the grain of the Daang Matuwid mantra.

At the very least, he can be accused of turning a blind eye to the corruption of the pork barrel until the mess accidentally erupted in public view. If Janet Napoles didn’t detain Benhur Luy against his will, we would have never known how big and how bad this pork barrel business has become.

Then, there is the matter of taking short cuts that were later on declared unconstitutional. And even if we grant for the sake of argument that DAP had good intentions, the fact that they used it to win favors from senators makes P-Noy complicit to the abuse.

The other thing that bothers me with the Palace lately is how on the one hand they made a big thing of saying that DAP is abolished because it is no longer needed, that it has accomplished its purpose. It is academic. Then some weeks later, P-Noy warns that the Supreme Court ruling sends a “chilling effect” on the economy, giving the impression DAP is a vital mechanism without which the economy’s growth may falter.

The SONA continued the defense of DAP, but not as combative as was with the Ulat sa Bayan last week. Impressive as the enumeration of some DAP projects may be, the question remains why this route was taken when they could have gone to Congress which they controlled anyway.

In any case, P-Noy seemed to have learned some lessons from the strong adverse public reaction. He was defensive, but no longer obnoxiously so. By presenting flesh and blood beneficiaries of DAP funded projects, he tried to win the public over, hoping they would look past the short cuts taken for the benefits delivered.

Nevertheless, the SONA glossed over areas where his administration fell short. There was no mention of DOTC and its failures... nor the Agri department.

He blamed the impending power crisis to weather, inadequate maintenance of existing power plants and delays in construction of new power plants without acknowledging his own government’s contribution to the problem. Beyond saying Sec Ikot Petilla was ordered to meet with the congressional energy oversight committee, the ERC and private power industry, nothing was offered by way of how he plans to deal with the crisis.

It is the same thing with the rice crisis. He blamed “hoarders” for the current price hike. No mention of failure of his own Agri secretary’s self sufficiency program, which he promised in past SONAs and the delayed importation this year. And with regards the hoarders, his own officials failed to curtail their market influence or even arrest them.

This brings up P-Noy’s biggest problem… his weak cabinet members and key officials who should have been changed by now. Two years is still a lot of time for P-Noy to redeem himself and leave a good legacy. But he has to let go of the barnacles in his administration.

Given that the first six months of 2016 should be considered lost to the election campaign, P-Noy effectively only has a year and a half to catch up. Catching up is impossible unless he is able to demand and get excellent performance from his team.

It bothered me when he said: “Sa lahat po ng naabot natin, masasabi ko pong ako po’y kuntento na po ako.” He sounded as if his physical end is near and it isn’t healthy to have a head of state who feels personally beleaguered, paranoid. Then also, one must not be contented because there is always so much to accomplish yet.

P-Noy should focus on the very visible deliverables in the next year and a half. NAIA, for starters!

 Governance

Sometimes I wonder if we are capable of good governance. It seems once we get some power in our hands, we tend to abuse authority entrusted to us.

Take the homeowners association in a gated QC village where I have lived for the past 31 years. Some years ago, the officers of the association wanted to build a community center. They justified it by saying they will have function rooms where our children can have their parties close to home.

I made an impassioned plea to our purok leader who represents our street at the board to forget this plan. In a purok meeting, I pointed out that such a new construction is a useless expenditure of the residents’ money. No, I was told, a senator has promised access to his pork barrel funds.

I still insisted that the so called community center will be a white elephant, they will spend beyond budget and in the end they will come back to the residents asking for higher dues. They did raise our dues this year and last Monday, the current association president sent a letter to residents calling for a fund raising because the association coffers are in deficit.

I can now tell my former purok leader and his fellow board members I told you. According to the current president, the center was budgeted at P14 million, went up to P18.9 million and there is a pending additional works billing that will bring total cost to P22.6 million.

The center’s function rooms are unable to generate any income. In their words, “Unfortunately, to-date, there have been very few who have used the community center for their projected functions. Worst, it would appear that renting out the community center will even result in a loss to the association considering the low rental rate and the minimum monthly electrical charge.”

I thought they studied the economics of it? Now they want to reduce the number of roving security guards, supposedly because they have also installed a CCTV system costing P3.7 million. As I told my former purok leader, the association should stick to its basic functions: 1) security and 2) grounds maintenance.

In the meantime, security has been iffy in our gated community. The association itself sends regular security circulars reporting robberies happening.

Doesn’t this sound like the national government?

We are a small community of professionals and business leaders and one would expect better governance. They built two P10-billion ports in Subic and Batangas that remain hardly utilized after completion. My homeowners association built an idle community center we can’t afford... the same edifice complex... the same hubris.

You guys know who you are. Why don’t you do the honorable thing and own up to your mistake? Take responsibility for the mess you created the way we urge our local and national leaders to take responsibility for the mess they create. Maybe a million from each of you should take care of the deficit in association finances.

I am sure the governance problems in our homeowners association are not uncommon. Good governance is probably not in our genetic make up as Quezon imagined. How sad.

Airport taxis

I received this e-mail from a reader who complained for the second time about airport taxis. This is another proof of an airport general manager who has miserably failed.

I recently planed in from London via PAL at terminal 2.

Exiting the terminal I went to the information desk to ask where I can get a taxi. The guy at the desk told me to go to Bay 19.

The taxi service at bay 19 wanted to charge me P1,200 for the short trip to McKinley Hill where I live. I told them that the reasonable charge is only P450. They told me there was no other taxi service, and when I turned around and walked away they ran after me and lowered the price to P800.

I saw some yellow (metered) cabs across the street and took the ride home. I eventually paid only P350 for the ride home!

What bothers me is that these overcharging cabs have NAIA management blessing. The information desk pointed me to them when they could have pointed me to the cheaper alternative across the street.

What kind of management do we have at NAIA? Regards.

Hay naku! Unfortunately P-Noy, it seems, cannot be expected to do the right thing because the NAIA GM is not only a close friend, but I am told, a relative as well.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco