P-Noy’s barkada governance kills

He should have learned his lesson by now. His type of barkada governance doesn’t work. In fact, P-Noy’s barkada governance style kills.

The deadly implication of barkada governance was demonstrated to us in that Luneta bus carnage. P-Noy entrusted his buddy Rico Puno with the task of coordinating with the police in managing that hostage crisis. We all know how that ended.

Pero matigas ang ulo. P-Noy insisted on keeping Rico Puno. Indeed, DOJ Sec de Lima’s investigation on that unfortunate bus tragedy was reported to have recommended sanctions for 15 individuals and media organizations including Rico Puno. Of course P-Noy defended Puno and no charge was filed against him.

P-Noy had to eventually let go of Puno when the stink in a PNP arms purchase deal became too much to bear. In both the Luneta fiasco and the PNP arms deal, P-Noy had to depend on the late DILG Sec Jesse Robredo to clean things up.

Ironically, Robredo was supposed to have been given orders to stay out of PNP matters because that was reserved for Puno. Never mind that PNP is under the DILG and Puno was only a Usec to Robredo.

It happened again in this Maguindanao carnage when DILG Sec Mar Roxas found himself clueless about a major operation carried out by a unit under his responsibility. My father’s generation had a word to describe what happened to Roxas: pendejo. A husband (or a cabinet member) who finds himself in this situation usually takes drastic action to save his and his family honor. Apparently, not Mar Roxas. P-Noy can continue using him as a doormat so long as he endorses his presidential bid in 2016.

Barkada governance is also the major reason why NAIA remains decrepit under a close buddy of P-Noy. True, they will soon show us cosmetic changes to placate angry citizens embarrassed by the airport terminal. But even that took too long at four years to produce what is more like a movie production set than a permanent improvement in an airport terminal.

What happened early last week in Maguindanao demonstrates how deadly this barkada governance policy can be. As it is slowly being revealed, Operation Wolverine was planned and managed by P-Noy’s kabarkadas… suspended PNP Chief Alan Purisima and Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa.

No wonder P-Noy seemed too evasive and defensive when he finally decided to surface after over three days of silence. He denied Purisima was involved beyond the early stages when he was not yet suspended. But the now suspended SAF Chief was reported to have admitted he was reporting to Purisima.

P-Noy also tried to cover up the role of Ochoa. But it eventually turned out that Ochoa was the link between the PNP guys working on the plan and P-Noy.

Indeed, even as P-Noy tried to make it look like he only had a general idea of the plan, it is turning out he knew more about it than he wants to admit. He knows he has some blood in his hands in sending those SAF troopers in an ill-planned and ill-executed operation. His attempt to do a Pontius Pilate isn’t working.

P-Noy couldn’t give a credible answer to a reporter who effectively asked what the chain of command was for the operation… who gave the orders, who was the SAF chief reporting to if the acting PNP chief was kept in the dark.

P-Noy was also reported to be monitoring progress of operations from Zamboanga and ready to triumphantly receive the captured fugitives. He was obviously in the chain of command. So why did he deny and insisted his go signal was not needed? A true leader would have said that as commander in chief he is responsible for the operation that was, with more than 400 men involved, more than an ordinary warrant service mission.

One of my friends expressed his sense of what happened when the kabarkadas plotted to undertake a mission all by themselves: “It angers me that young men must pay with their lives for the ambition of old men.” That’s the tragedy, in gist.

P-Noy at this late date has been unable to transform himself into a President and Commander-in-Chief we can respect. He continues to be afraid to go beyond his comfort zone of friends and kabarkadas who keep on letting him and this nation down.

What worries me is that the Commander-in-Chief seems to have lost a great deal of his men’s confidence and respect. That’s dangerous. He has to rebuild that confidence quickly and everything starts by letting the truth out on what really happened, before, during and after the carnage. Spending over 14 hours talking to each of the SAF 44 families is a good start but not enough.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend that P-Noy read this very insightful article of Criselda Yabes, a highly respected journalist who has written books on the military and Mindanao. I hope my friends Sonny Coloma and Edwin Lacierda will have the balls to print this article out for P-Noy to read.

Here is the link:

That PNP inquiry will not be credible. It cannot call its superiors to account. Not even a DILG panel can be credible because even P-Noy has lots to explain.

An impartial citizens board of inquiry is necessary if confidence in P-Noy’s government is to be restored. Or hopefully, Grace Poe’s Senate inquiry will do the job.

So many things can happen in the remaining one and half years that may not be good for the public interest. We need to know for sure that P-Noy has learned his lesson and only a public cleansing will do that.

Poverty and development

Rufo Colayco, who has had years of management experience in both the private and public sectors sent me this e-mail reacting to my column about the World Bank prescriptions to eradicate poverty.

If I correctly understand what you’ve written, you basically agree with the WB structural reforms requirements for us to eradicate poverty. Indeed, the list is virtually a textbook list of what a country needs to do to generate jobs; how can one disagree with it? 

Where you query the WB’s statement arises solely from your understandable skepticism about the willingness of our elites to subscribe to the necessary reforms. I think that’s spot-on.

I’d suggest an additional point of doubt about our ability to get things moving. That’s what I see as the inability of NEDA to undertake effective development planning as opposed to the macro-analysis that the learned economists there are wont to do. Like the WB, our officials whose job is to formulate effective strategies & action plans focus on numbers rather than grounded understanding of what’s needed to empower the private sector.

Let me give you a glimpse of what I’m referring to:  When I first proposed the Subic-Clark expressway in 1999, the folks in NEDA opposed it as redundant because the Olongapo-Gapan highway was already in use & scheduled for expansion & upgrading.

It took a few months for them to comprehend the difference between a national highway & a high-speed limited access expressway. I believe they’ve moved forward substantially in the meantime, but I still don’t see the kind of comprehensive thinking such as that in Singapore and other places.

So, could we eradicate poverty in a generation? How many years does a generation take? Deng Xiaoping got the great China reform moving in 1979. I don’t have precise figures in mind, but I believe it’s fair to say that by the time of The Hand Over (1997), some 100 million plus Chinese had been lifted out of dire poverty.

My final point is this -- if a President with P-Noy’s clear aversion vs. plundering public resources were at the same time capable of mobilizing the bureaucracy & the political leaders to expeditiously build judiciously planned infrastructure, plus reduce choking bureaucracy, etc. IN A LIMITED AREA such as Region 3, there would follow a success story which can be increasingly replicated in other regions as they see the beneficial results.

In brief, we need to get going on nuts & bolts items even whilst addressing the larger issues. If the manufacturing, tourism & agricultural program that we in BCDA proposed to PGMA in 2003 had been pursued, the hopelessly choked industries in Valenzuela-Novaliches might have by now moved into industrial zones along the Subic-Clark logistics corridor. They would be competitive against foreign rivals in both export as well as the domestic markets.

If a 2,000 hectare tourism zone on the Zambales coast had been initiated at the time; if the broad flatlands of Nueva Ecija had been mobilized with irrigation, farm roads, etc., who knows what might have got done by now.

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