As I See It
Will Neri make a good SSS administrator?
By Neal Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:36:00 07/11/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Social Security System (SSS) administrator Corazon de la Paz has long been unhappy in her job. She was not a choice of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She was brought in by then-secretary of finance Jose Isidro Camacho, who wanted somebody to safeguard the money of SSS members. The two previous administrators invested in risky projects, resulting in billions of pesos in losses to the state retirement fund. De la Paz is an auditor, so she scrutinized every proposed expense and disapproved anything she thought extravagant and unsafe investments.
But with the SSS having tens of billions of pesos in investible funds, many covetous eyes were focused on it. However, with the administrator being so stingy, friends of the Palace could not get loans and investments from it. So there was grumbling and a silent effort to get her out.
De la Paz’s Achilles heel is that she likes to travel. She is away at a conference somewhere most of the time. It is not known whether she was just trying to escape pressure from politicians and cronies who all wanted some of the SSS money or she just loves to travel. But while she had a deputy administrator whom she left as officer in charge, she limited his authority, confining him to routine administrative matters. Decisions had to wait for her, which left a lot business hanging and many investment opportunities missed.
She appointed three consultants to help her but they were all auditors, so their thinking was all the same: conservative. There was no balanced viewpoint. As a result, most of SSS investible funds remained in the banks, were not put in high-yielding, long-term investments and therefore did not earn as much as they should, leaving many of her subordinates unhappy. Not only were the benefits to SSS members not increasing, benefits to SSS executives and employees also were not increasing.
De la Paz was aware of the unhappiness in her staff. Malacañang was also unhappy and made it known. Their allies could not get SSS loans and investments. What are they in power for?
The best SSS administrator, so far, was the late Gilberto Teodoro, father of the present secretary of defense. He resisted both Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and their cronies whenever they asked for money. Teodoro’s goal was to preserve the money of SSS members, not to please the President and his friends. De la Paz wanted to do the same thing. So she was also unhappy and she wanted out. She finally handed in her resignation, effective at the end of the month.
That immediately turned Malacañang’s unhappiness to extreme happiness. That gave the President a coveted position to give to one of her allies. (The most coveted positions in this government are those in agencies with the most money, like the SSS, Government Service Insurance System, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., or Pagcor, Land Bank of the Philippines, Bureau of Customs and Bureau of Internal Revenue, or BIR.) Ms Arroyo’s reflex action is to give jobs to her candidates who lost in last year’s senatorial elections. She offered the SSS job to former senator Ralph Recto but he turned it down because his wife Vilma Santos will be the running mate of Vice President Noli de Castro in the 2010 presidential election.
So she turned again to her trusted troubleshooter, Commission on Higher Education Chair Romulo Neri of the ZTE national broadband network (NBN) deal. But that means Neri will lose his Cabinet rank, so Ms Arroyo elevated the position to Cabinet status, creating a “social welfare cluster” and making Neri its head although the social welfare secretary is already a Cabinet member. Ms Arroyo wanted to announce Neri’s appointment immediately even if the person he was going to replace (De la Paz) was still abroad, otherwise there would have been intense pressure on her to appoint losing candidates whose greedy eyes were on the SSS (one such candidate had asked, first, for Pagcor, then Bureau of Customs, then BIR, then SSS—you have to hand it to the President, she knew why he wanted those positions.)
So the questions foremost in the minds of SSS staff and members are: Will Neri make a good SSS administrator? Will he preserve SSS funds or was he made to head the social welfare cluster to be able to use SSS funds to buy the support of the poor, but which is not the intent of the SSS law? SSS money belongs to the members who pay the premiums that become the funds that are invested by the SSS so they will grow and returned to them as retirement pay.
As shown in the ZTE-NBN case, Neri is an honest man. But as was also shown, he is loyal to his benefactor. Remember, when he told Ms Arroyo that he was offered a P200-million bribe to approve the ZTE-NBN deal, she told him to “approve it anyway” and he did. So would he be able to resist orders from the Palace as did Teodoro and De la Paz? Experience has shown that the two more pliable administrators who succeeded Teodoro led the SSS to investment disasters. Members can only wait with bated breath.
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As gasoline prices and bus, jeepney and taxi fares soar, the cheaper and faster overhead train systems are overwhelmed with commuters. Any other manager would welcome the additional passengers as an opportunity to expand, but like most government appointees Metro Rail Transit (MRT) general manager Roberto Lastimoso only sees it as an added burden.
With more passengers, the MRT and the Light Rail Transit (LRT) would be justified in importing more coaches and trains. With the billions the government has paid (and will continue to pay) in subsidies, it can buy more coaches and trains. Then the government would no longer have to subsidize the fare of each passenger. The elevated trains would be self-supporting, no longer white elephants.
But Lastimoso doesn’t care to be self-supporting when the government pays for the losses anyway. Maybe what the LRT and MRT need is somebody with a progressive mind, not somebody with a police mind.
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