Ducky Paredes

“The President appoints anyone (relatives, cronies, childhood friends and classmates – in fact, just about anybody) to run these establishments.” 

by Ducky Paredes

A Senate resolution expresses shock over the “excessive and unwarranted” allowances, bonuses, incentives and other perks received by executives of government-owned and –controlled corporations. The Senate resolution asks the President to make these executives stop.

The resolution filed by Sen. Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee, also asked that the “directors’ fees, bonuses, stock options, allowances and other benefits of the representatives of the GOCCs and GFIs in the governing boards and subsidiaries where the said GOCCs and GFIs have investments or outstanding loans be turned over to the concerned GOCCs and GFIs.”

There was a time when this was not a problem. It used to be that what Drilon is now proposing as a solution was actually the prevalent practice. Persons sitting on boards as representatives of government corporations would turn over whatever they received from these companies to the government. As our society as a whole (and government) turned more and more dishonest, this practice (which was never set in stone) was, first ignored, then, later, totally abandoned.

In looking over the budgets of these GOCCs, the senators discovered the dishonesty practiced by officials and governing boards of various GOCCs and GFIs — the Metropolitan Water and Sewerage System, Government Service Insurance System, Social Security System, the Development Bank of the Philippines and Clark Development Authority, who, among others, “have been granting themselves unwarranted allowances, bonuses, incentives, stock options and other benefits.”

Notes the senate resolution: “Among the irregular and abusive practices uncovered during the inquiry were: (a) the representatives of the Social Security Commission (SSC) to the board of directors of Philex Mining earned, in addition to their bonuses, some P55 million by way of stock options; (b) three SSS representatives in the board of directors of Union Bank earned P46 million in bonuses, or around P15 million each; (c) the MWSS, despite incurring a loss of P3.5 billion in 2008, declared a bonus of P5 million for its board members in 2009 and granted 25 bonuses in one year; and (d) GOCCs have failed to comply with the requirement of R.A. 7656 to remit 50 percent of its net earnings to the national government.”

One has to ask, however, how it happens that, since the Senate has been looking over the budgets of these GOCCs and GFIs annually, why this anomaly seems to have been discovered only now. This is not a new thing; it has been going on forever.

Certainly, this needs reform; if the present President will succeed in leaving a better country than whet he inherited, he must find a way of reigning in the greed that pervaded in the last administration. Perhaps, though, there may also be a need for reform in how those who would run these government institutions and corporations are chosen.

The President appoints anyone (relatives, cronies, childhood friends and classmates – in fact, just about anybody) to run these establishments. The appointment paper from the Office of the President addressed to the Board of Directors of the GOCC begins with this:  “It is my desire that . . .” Thus, ultimately, the President is responsible for how his appointees do.

Perhaps, a President ought to instruct each appointee as to the limits of his emoluments.  Either that or there ought to be a law that establishes absolute limits on what these presidential favorites can take home. After all, they are political appointees whose primary qualification is that they are personally known to the President or one of his close associates. If they are over-qualified for what they will be making, let them treat the posting as a sacrifice for the country. If they are (as must will be) under-qualified, they ought to kiss the feet of the President every single day that they have such a posting in a country with possibly the highest percentage of jobless college graduates.

That this is happening (a few persons taking home millions) even as these government firms are still being subsidized by the government to the tune of more than P15 billion annually is a mark of how dishonest we have become, as evidenced by the presidential cronies of the last President.

What, to me, is truly condemnable is that this was also happening in the Social Security System (SSS) and the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS). These two GFIs oversee the contributions of private and government workers. They are handling, not government funds, but workers’ funds.  Thus, when Drilon reveals that outgoing SSS chairman Thelmo Cunanan received a total of P132.65 million compensation as a member of the board of directors of Philex Mining, First Philippine Holdings, and Union Bank from 2007 to 2010, one who contributed to the SSS as a worker, has a right to feel robbed.

Senator Drilon is right in saying this: “Thelmo Cunanan is a member of board of directors of Philex and Union Bank. His bonuses belong to the SSS because the social fund has investments with these private companies.”

The one good thing about the SSS is that the new P’Noy-appointed SSS chairman is a proven manager who ran multinationals locally and abroad and the new President, a veteran banker. This is a much better crew that that of a retired general and a government functionary who both were, besides being ill equipped for their positions, never even members of the SSS.

(One wonders though how much — in retirement benefits — they will be receiving from the workers’ fund.)

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“Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.” – Thomas Jefferson

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“I have sat at the sumptuous tables of power, but I have not run away with the silverware.”  – Diosdado Macapagal

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“There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.“ — Jose Rizal 

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hvp (09.02.10)

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