The popular saying is that when elephants fight, the little ants stay quiet on the side. That’s what we ordinary mortals did the other day—watch from the sides as the Lopezes and Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president and general manager Winston Garcia fought for control of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) at its annual stockholders’ meeting. We couldn’t make much of what was happening, as the media were not allowed to cover the rowdy proceedings.
What we saw amid all the shouting was what was deemed as an illegal order of the Securities and Exchange Commission by one side and an illegal meeting by the other side. What’s foreseeable in the coming weeks is that Garcia will bring his case to the SEC, which is now under pressure to enforce its cease-and-desist order which the Meralco board did not honor.
In the meantime, the little ants have not forgotten that what’s primordial is that the cost of electricity must come down. We need genuine reforms in the power sector. When will this happen?
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But there’s another matter of almost equal importance—the proposal of Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza to make text messaging free of charge. Mendoza was quoted as saying that the telecom companies make enormous profits from text messaging; not only that, they violate their franchise, which is confined only to voice communication, by charging a fee for text messaging. Some argue that such move by government would be a blow against free enterprise and only scare investors even more. The telecom companies themselves warn they’d close down text service if government forces them to offer it for free.
I personally am against free texts for one reason: It would encourage further misuse of something inherently good but which has been abused so much by local users. Free texting would result in unbridled use, which means students not being able to study well and labor productivity going down further as house helpers, office and factory workers and others engage in more gossip, courtship by text, etc. Raise the taxes on telecom companies, lower the cost of text messaging, but no free texting, please.
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I’m glad the new Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff, Alexander Yano (Philippine Military Academy Class of 1976), has stressed he’d personally turn over to civilian authorities AFP members involved in summary executions and human rights abuses. This should help placate critics especially in the European community who feel, after UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston issued his report last year, that the Philippine government has been soft on military violators.
But the soldiers cannot complain about the AFP chief’s strong posture, as Yano deals an even hand. One of his last acts as Philippine Army commander last March was to suspend one of his senior commanders—a two-star general and PMA classmate of his predecessor, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon—for extorting from Army recruits and mismanaging militia funds. The implication of Yano’s recent moves is that he aims to restore credibility and integrity in the AFP.
I first met Yano after the typhoons that severely hit the Bicol region two years ago. He was supervising the troops who were opening roads there for relief goods to pass. Learning later that he was being groomed to succeed Esperon I inquired about him and found that he was highly spoken of by officers as well as by rank and file.
Cecile Alvarez and I invited Yano to guest on our dzRH radio program last Sunday evening. He spoke about the problems of the AFP quite articulately. I commented about this trait being rare among military people, and with a laugh he ascribed it to the fact that his 83-year-old mother Gloria, a Grade 1 teacher for 34 years and still living in their hometown of Sindangan, Zamboanga del Norte, was his earliest mentor. “Up to now she treats me like a Grade 1 student,” he said.
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Yano said he got his first glimpse of how his media pronouncements could get him into trouble when he was quoted as saying that the New People’s Army (NPA) could not be eradicated by 2010. This put him seemingly contradicting his commander in chief whose marching order to the AFP was to “strategically defeat” the NPA. Actually, Yano explained, what he said was that he was hoping to reduce the NPA threat to “an ordinary police problem” by that year. He admitted later that he had to explain his statement to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who understood.
Yano stressed that the insurgency threat is not just a military problem, “and if people think so, they are mistaken.” He said in this fight the local government units should be in the forefront and the AFP should just be in support of the national and local governments, the private sector and the citizens. “They should be aware that they are part of the solution,” he stressed.
There was a part of our interview that should be stated here—the role of the military commander’s wife. Yano stressed that military wives “are not in the chain of command” and that those who would bring matters of promotion to his wife, the former Estela Aragon—a retired nurse by whom he has a son, Ervin Andrew—“won’t get anywhere.” In the long history of the AFP/PNP, some commanders got into trouble because of wives meddling in office matters. It’s good that the straight-talking Yano chose to underscore this point.
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Normally I wouldn’t come to the rescue of my friend Lilia de Lima, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) director-general. But when another friend, Philippine Star columnist Boo Chanco, usually a careful writer, made the same mistake, I felt something had to be done. He wondered in his column Wednesday why Lilia was transferred from PEZA, where she seems to be perfectly happy, to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). He was actually referring to election lawyer Leila de Lima, who was recently appointed by President Arroyo to chair the CHR. Boo’s mistake is understandable—it’s tough to imagine two super-known and active women figures, such as Leila and Lilia, who are both surnamed De Lima and both lawyers, at that.
