Can P-Noy do a Spoelstra?

I hope P-Noy and his cabinet members have been watching the NBA finals. I know they are having too much fun already with the bureaucratic games they play but watching the NBA finals should teach them a few lessons on the value of teamwork.

It was horrible to watch officials on TV Patrol the other evening blaming each other’s office for that blood pressure raising flood and monumental traffic jam last Monday evening. DPWH says MMDA is to blame. MMDA says DPWH’s failure caused the problems.

As a taxpaying citizen, I say: a curse on both of you. You are supposed to be playing for the same team but it is obvious you don’t coordinate much and there’s a lot of contempt for each other. Next question… what does the Coach say, as in what does P-Noy have to say about this mess?

When Miami Heat lost one of the games badly to the Spurs, its Filipino-American coach Erik Spoeltstra admitted the other team had better team work. Indeed, the Spurs also had less superstar egos. They may yet win Game 7. But Spoelstra must have made some changes because they came back recharged and won their next game.

That is what P-Noy must do now in the second half of his term. He needs to have a heart-to-heart talk with some of his cabinet members and impress upon them that those who have a superstar complex can leave.

Indeed, some cabinet members think P-Noy can’t do without them. As a result, major infrastructure projects have been stalled as they show their importance by objecting or insisting in their interpretation of terms after other cabinet members have agreed.

That’s why projects that could have been launched during P-Noy’s first year remain entangled in the approval process. Take that urgently needed NLEX-SLEX connector road project. I am beginning to lose hope these will ever break ground before 2016.

It was tough in the beginning because there were two competing proposals. One proposal, San Miguel’s, had to go through DOJ vetting on its vested right to do the project. It passed that one but the problems were just beginning.

The other proposal was MVP’s, a BOT proposal. It wants to build above the PNR tracks in Metro Manila but PNR mortgaged its air rights to raise funds in the past and lost it for nonpayment.

Luckily, the air rights ended up with a government-owned corporation, a housing agency under VP Jojo Binay. In the spirit of teamwork, Binay readily agreed to cede control of the air rights to DOTC then under Mar.

One problem solved. But then DOTC Sec Mar Roxas wanted to use the same air rights to run the fast train from Clark. Eventually, this was ironed out too.

In the meantime, there was this additional kink when DPWH tried to move heaven and earth to take control of the project from the Toll Regulatory Board. This senseless bureaucratic turf war reached all the way to Malacanang which decided eventually that TRB keeps control.

Last hurdle is what to do with the two offers. P-Noy made the Solomonic decision: let both of them build their connector roads. A good decision because it removed a potential legal scuffle. Anyway, sooner or later the traffic volume will require both roads. And it is private sector risk capital so there is no exposure for the taxpayer.

The two proponents then fought over how to handle the common alignment or the portion where the two alignments end up using the same right-of-way. After much negotiation, that too was hurdled.

But groundbreaking is far from assured. At this late hour, the project is stalled because the Secretary of Finance wants PNCC, a corporation majority but not totally controlled by government, taken out of the picture. PNCC is asserting its rights under an old Marcos Decree but DOF is saying its franchise has expired.

The issue is now with the DOJ to rule upon. So, the San Miguel alignment cannot break ground. The MVP alignment has to go through Swiss challenge yet. The PNCC issue hangs over both. DOJ has been delayed in issuing its ruling. In the meantime, people have to suffer horrendous traffic jams and street floods that should have been addressed by even one of the alignments.

I think P-Noy should lock up the Secretaries of Finance, Justice, Transportation, Public Works and NEDA together with the Solicitor General in one room with a threat that they will remain locked in until they come up with an agreement. Food and water will not be served and the air conditioning curtailed. If that doesn’t get them talking and being reasonable, nothing else will.

P-Noy can do the same for all the stalled projects of DOTC because all of these involve one department or another imposing some objection that’s taking forever to resolve. Of course it would also help if some experienced engineers rescued the embattled undersecretaries at DOTC, all lawyers, who are literally over their heads with the papers awaiting their signatures.

Indeed they have given up on the big ticket DOTC projects. Secretary Abaya is now saying their only goal is to award the projects before 2016, not even to break ground on them. Isn’t that sad?

I am told that P-Noy is antsy about getting the big projects going but he is not doing enough to get that message through to his team members. If he did, there would be more discernible sense of urgency to shoot all those balls and score some for the people.

I hate to say this but P-Noy is now also to blame for this standstill and colossal failure. If P-Noy was coaching a team in the NBA, he would have failed to reach even the semi-finals and most likely fired at the end of the season.

Lucky for P-Noy he has a fixed term as President and cannot be fired except through impeachment. But the failure to deliver infrastructure impacts badly on getting the real economy going, the one beyond the GDP numbers and the credit rating upgrades. It impacts on our ability to cut the poverty rate through increased economic activities and job creation.

  Now the ball is in the hands of Coach P-Noy at half time. How will he redeploy his team? Will he change the players on the floor? How will he deal with the superstars with outsized egos? Will he exhort them to play as a team, threaten to fire them otherwise because losing the game is not an option?

  Can P-Noy do a Spoelstra?

Overlooked?

My favorite grammar Nazi was so disappointed with my last column I just have to share his e-mail. Don’t get me wrong… I use “Nazi” here lovingly. I totally respect Jose Carillo and appreciate his calling my attention now and then. Here is his e-mail:

Knowing you to know your English grammar and usage very well, I suspect that this repeated cringeworthy English in your “Demand and Supply” column in the Philippine Star today, June 19, 2013, could only be the handiwork of an uninformed proofreader (italicizations mine):

“Under promise, over deliver

“It is really frustrating to see the P-Noy administration falling for the same mistakes of the Arroyo administration: it over promises and under delivers...”

The usage of the words “over promises” and “under delivers” here is highly ambiguous and confusing; in fact, the sense of both word-pairs border on the nonsensical. For the meaning intended by that headline and lead sentence, those words should have been compounded into the single-word verbs “overpromises” and “underdelivers” or, at the very least, into the hyphenated compound verbs “over-promises” and “under-delivers.”

Combining those two word-pairs either way would have made them express the single concept you intended for each of them—“underdeliver,” to fail to meet a target in the provision of goods or services, and “overpromise,” to create excessive expectations that could not be met.

What can I say? Mea culpa! Actually, I was unsure or didn’t realize how grievous the mistake was. I was waylaid by MS Word’s grammar/spell check which underlined “underdeliver” and “underpromise” with a screaming red line. It was only appeased after I clicked its suggestion: two words. Indeed, your use of cringeworthy as one word is also honored by that red line. 

So sorry Herr Kapitan… will try to do better next time. But you must have a word with the guys at Microsoft for misleading poor ol’ me. Then again, maybe the version I am using is pirated… from China!

Ooopps

From one of my doctor friends.

Anne has sued a hospital, saying that after her husband was treated there, he had lost all interest in sex.

A hospital spokesman replied, “Your husband was actually admitted into Ophthalmology - all we did was correct his eyesight...”

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