Hands-off manager - Gotcha

A "bad" thing turned good. Sen. Raul Roco's "indiscreet" breach of its confidentiality has alerted brokers about holes in the Philippine Stock Exchange's report on BW Resources. Now, eight brokerages named in the report are complaining that four others who had traded more heavily than they were let off. Too, BW owner Dante Tan is accusing the four of trying to do him in.

That's what's good about transparency, one of the democratic ideals Filipinos fought for at EDSA 14 years ago today. It exposes the whole truth and forestalls whitewash of public offenses.

"Give him a break," presidential spokesman Jerry Barican had said about how escapee-murderer Norberto Manero's name slipped into a list of convicts for Joseph Estrada's traditional New Year's pardon. "You can't expect him to go over the list of 500 names. The President signs dozens of papers each day." Makes one worry what other dark acts were sneaked into the dozens of papers Estrada signed that day . . . or the day before...or the day after. Makes one wonder too if the President ever peruses such papers, or just signs them just because they were placed on his desk by any of his in-fighting aides.

His advisers confide that Estrada's management style is to delegate responsibility. Fine, if he can trust the subordinate he's delegating to, but not if the factotum is careless yet can't own up to a mistake by resigning when it explodes on the President's face -- as in the Manero case.

Only once perhaps did Estrada take full responsibility for any of his controversial acts. At the height of public furor over the Cabinet's use of smuggled luxury vans, he kept saying he assigned the cars himself, for he knew what he was doing -- so those who were questioning him should try becoming President first. To this day, though, Malacañang has shown no MR (memorandum receipt) he signed for any car. And his stubborn refusal to admit wrong cost him that quarter's surveys.

In many other instances, Estrada had no knowledge of his acts -- or critics suspected he was only feigning so. When the press reported that a presidential cousin who was lobbying for release of P240 million in textbook funds was a Malacañang consultant, Barican said the President was surprised. It turned out later that the cousin did hold an appointment paper signed by Estrada -- just that it carried the cousin's married name, not her maiden name.

When news broke just a few months into his term that the BIR had withdrawn its years-long tax case against Lucio Tan, Estrada said he knew nothing about it. The case was for P25 billion, one-eighth of BIR's collection target that year, yet he said no one cleared the matter with him. When news also broke that his new housing czar Sel Yulo has a string of pecuniary cases in court, he also said he didn't know.

Other times upon receiving a hot report, Estrada just shrugged as if it was none of his business or everything was alright. Informed that convicted partymate Romeo Jalosjos had thrown a lavish birthday party inside prison, Estrada said there was nothing wrong because the rape case was on appeal before the Supreme Court. On his pal Mark Jimenez's extradition, Estrada said he must leave everything to the courts -- although it's the justice and foreign affairs departments of his executive branch that must enforce the treaty. Then he forgot all about separation of powers and called SEC chairman Perfecto Yasay four times to intercede for Dante Tan in investigations of insider trading.

Fidel Ramos was said to have been a hands-on manager who studied every document in hand. Whenever in doubt, he would mark a paper "CSW", meaning, complete staff work to ferret out more info for a sound decision. He looked into every detail, and thus had to work from dawn to dusk to clear his desk of papers.

Estrada, who hates everything about the past administration and thus blames it for all his woes, would rather take his hands off things.

INTERACTION. Graham Haigh, netasia.net: "Uh-oh, they're bailing out" (Gotcha, 19 Feb. 2000) saddened me, but I agree with you on why foreign investors are pulling out. I had overseen hiring and training of Filipinos. They were the finest staff I've worked with in 30 years in the human-resource profession in 20 countries. Tragic that they'll be thrown back into unemployment statistics. They'll be well-compensated because their employer is humane, but that's not the point. They'll have to remake the future they thought they had secured in a world-class firm. In the past administration we foreign businessmen thought we saw a positive approach to developing a country. Everyone knows RP has infratructure woes, but we investors thought we could live with it because we saw them being systematically addressed. Now we see a knee-jerk, rudderless style of governance.

Danny Lua, i-next.net: Why are they leaving? With reduction of tariff on goods made within ASEAN, it makes sense for multinationals in Manila to relocate factories where infrastructures are better, traffic jams and pollution are less. This is made worse by a government that's on auto-pilot.

Atty. Carlos M. Lacanilao, info.com: That they're bailing out is nothing new. Barican says it's as old as Methuselah. Recall that at the start of this admin, Warner-Lambert, Johnson&Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive, etc., left RP. It ignored them, saying RP will be the model for recovery from the Asian crisis. Foreign funds fled the stock market for 14 days in a row. Situate this with the Yasay-Erap-PSE imbroglio, the balance-of-payments deficit, the sudden sacking of Cuevas and PCSO's Munoz-Palma, names like Dante Tan and Atong Ang or De Jesus and Zamora, protests against fuel price increases and secession in the South, the departure of Espiritu and David and Estrella -- and finally the statement of Tuquero that Erap is answerable only to God and his conscience...

Please, Atty. Carlos, stop, I can't take anymore of it.

Veronica N. Santos, Calamba, Laguna: I'm inclined to think we're a nation under God's judgment.

Epi Espaldon, Ayala-Alabang: Barican should consider quitting. It's painful to watch him explain issues by obfuscation and evasion. Hindi bagay, from what I saw in him in our U.P. days.

Joey Tandoc: If you're with 3-D, he's with 3-G: guns, goons, gold.

C. Ibarra, Vt.: He's been sticking it to Filipinos from the day he was sworn into office. Feb. 25 should be a make-or-break from him.

Archie Andal, pworld.net: No amount of people power can change RP if change will not come from within us. What this country needs is an enema.

Yuck, Archie, I'm eating.

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