Proud of Filipino quality!

The Philippine STAR’s front page news last Friday about the Philippine Air Force (PAF) having more "generals than jets, more colonels than choppers" was quite amusing, but it gives truism to the stories that our Air Force is all air! I reckon that if the Air Force has more generals than jets, more colonels than choppers, one can also say that the Philippine Navy must have more admirals than ships! Indeed, this scenario may sound funny, but better believe that it ain’t funny at all!

When I wrote those articles about the happenings in Balamban, which has two shipyards, the Tsuneishi Heavy Industries (Cebu) Inc., which manufactures those 56,000 DWT bulk carriers, and the FBMA Marine, which just launched its latest 64-meter catamaran which can carry 1,200 passengers and 60 cars, I got a lot of responses asking me why the Philippine Navy wasn’t purchasing vessels right here. Like what I wrote earlier, I really don’t know.

What I do know is that FBMA Marine delivered last year three 27-meter, 55-ton patrol training vessels to the United Kingdom, which means Filipino quality is good enough for England, which was once upon a time the greatest naval power on earth! Forgive me for waving the Filipino flag, but I dare say that it’s about time we Filipinos start believing in ourselves... that we, too, can compete globally in any product we make in terms of quality and price!

Oops! I almost forgot that FBMA Marine also inked recently a $20-million deal with Lockheed Martin Corp. to build a slice crew boat to be used in ferrying crews of Lockheed Corp.’s oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a very unique and sort of an experimental vessel since it has fins on its hull to stabilize it because it has to tread in very rough seas. Lockheed Martin is the company that makes the Hercules C-130 planes and the Joint Strike Fighter (JAST), America’s best fighter aircraft.

If I’m wearing a Timex Indiglo watch, it is only because a Cebuano designed and manufactured this watch here at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ). So, too, with my Optio Pentax digital camera. Some years ago, I was with some friends in New York City and because it was too cold, we had to buy gloves and we found an inexpensive pair but which fit well. When we got into a restaurant, my friend chided me that I bought a made-in-the-Philippines gloves using my precious US dollars. Well, my response then was I couldn’t have found those gloves back home because they didn’t sell them there!

Anyway, I read in last Monday’s front page of The Philippine STAR about an angry Senate President Franklin Drilon warning the DOTC for illegally purchasing P3.5 billion worth of rescue vessels for the Philippine Coast Guard without an appropriation from the 2003 budget. This happened during DOTC Secretary Pantaleon Alvarez’s time. But this makes me wonder what if we built those rescue vessels in Balamban. I’m sure that P3.5 billion would buy a few vessels, but more importantly, building these vessels here means the bulk of the P3.5 billion would be spent for more jobs at home!

At this point, we can only exhort the DOTC or the Department of Defense and Congress to come to Balamban and see for themselves what the Filipino can do so they will believe that the Filipino worker is capable of making world-class vessels, be they privately owned or naval craft, before they purchase naval or Coast Guard vessels abroad.

* * *

Associate Justice Artemio Panganiban told a conference on judicial excellence that last year, the Supreme Court purged some 56 erring judges from the judiciary, bringing to a total of 582 the magistrates, a.k.a. "rogues in robes," penalized by the High Tribunal since 1986. As Justice Panganiban aptly put it: "Legally knowledgeable Judges who have no regard for ethics are dangerous to society; they may turn out to be worse than the criminals they sentence to jail... they are the scum and scourge of the Judiciary!" Well said!

This brings back the suggestion I gave to Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. last year that judges fired by the Supreme Court should also be summarily disbarred from the practice of law. As the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed, corruption is still very much a problem in the judiciary despite the valiant efforts of Chief Justice Davide Jr.

Indeed, we already heard reports that fired judges who are now practicing lawyers, are using their old contacts or comrades in robes to win cases for their clients, and more often than not, friends will be friends and a sitting judge may just take pity on a former judge making a living as a lawyer. But in the end, it doesn’t stop the corruption from spreading, hence, the better part of valor is to not just fire the erring judge from the bench, but he should also be disbarred from practicing his profession.

One of the reasons why we still have problems in the judiciary is the lack of financial support from Congress. We did write a report a couple of weeks ago about a regional trial court (RTC) judge who was balled out by a mayor of a component city in Metro Cebu because he did not get a favorable decision in a particular case. Because the mayor was unhappy with the decision of the court, all financial support to the RTC branch was removed. This only proved that the mayor used his financial support to the judiciary as a "string" to win cases. Now that he lost a case, he immediately removed it in disgust! So much for judicial independence, but I have it from an impeccable source that the Chief Justice was angry when he heard about this.

But at least in the judiciary, we can see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel because there are now many judges who deserve recognition because of their probity, integrity and knowledge of the law. In Cebu, we have the still-to-be-recognized Judge Benedicto Cobarde of RTC Branch 53 in Lapu-Lapu City who goes to work on a jeepney and a tricycle and lives in a modest home. This is a rarity for an executive judge; we should have more of his kind!

* * *

For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.