The wrong kind of judgment from the ‘animal kingdom’

There was indeed deplorable, even fatal negligence in the crowd handling at ULTRA which deteriorated into a crazy stampede in which 74, mostly women and children (very few men) were killed in the crush, and hundreds of others injured. But for Interior Undersecretary Marius Corpus to declare that ABS-CBN had exploited the poor and treated the fans "like animals" is too harsh – in fact, unjust.

This accusation, by the way, has already been quoted in the overseas press.

National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) chief Ronald Oliver Solis quickly followed up this condemnation by growling that ABS-CBN might even be "taken off the air" for acts "detrimental to public health and safety." The NTC, of course, has the power of life and death over radio and television (not the print media), empowered as it is not merely to impose fines and penalties but actually cancel the license of a network to broadcast over the airwaves.

On the other hand, let me say this: the closure or suppression of a radio-television network is a serious matter and such a threat must not be delivered lightly, even by the "mighty" NTC. So let’s go slow on such announcements.

ABS-CBN, for its part, has been bashing President Macapagal-Arroyo almost non-stop for months since the "Hello Garci" and the "Gloria Resign!" crisis. I hope the slings and arrows of outraged fortune the network has been getting in the wake of the terrible ULTRA tragedy is not La Gloria’s revenge. Alas, when you dish it out, you must be prepared, in turn, to take it on the chin.

I believe that a more exhaustive and less hortatory investigation into what transpired at ULTRA ought to be conducted before a judgment is made. However, it was evident ab initio that everybody responsible for managing the avalanche-crowd of "Wowowee" worshippers and eager would-be-prizewinners badly goofed.

As for the police, whatever General Oscar Valenzuela says, the PNP cannot wash its hands of blame. From 4 a.m. on that ill-fated Saturday, the ABS-CBN managers claim, they were asking the police to come "control" what was becoming an unruly mob. Ultimately, it is the duty of the police to maintain order, not just solve crime. That nobody "coordinated" or told the police what to do cannot be trotted out as an excuse for inability to tame a mob. Are they good only in dispersing anti-GMA demonstrations or riots?

The fact is that roughnecks on both sides tried to crash into the gate and grab the first "tickets" ahead of those who had been queuing patiently and legitimately – some of them even camping on the spot days before the event. If our cops had only been properly tasked to wade in and bash a few heads (knocking sense into pushing and shoving bullies), the grief of that cruel stampede might have been avoided.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to blame the police. But I submit that their timidity – I won’t say laziness – contributed to the fiasco.

In the end, as ABS-CBN Chairman Eugenio "Gabby" Lopez III has already stated, the network takes full responsibility. The thrust of the current and subsequent inquiry must be to find out what went wrong, where the managers dismally failed, and how the entire thing was bungled, so such a violent and homicidal fiasco can be avoided in the future.

After the violence of that Saturday mob, let’s not pursue a solution by ourselves demonstrating a lynch-mob mentality.

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Three-term Congressman Jesli A. Lapus (3rd District, Tarlac) joined us for breakfast the other day at the Tuesday Club.

Although some people believe my old friend Jesli is aspiring for the job of Secretary of Finance, since he was a top professional manager in the private sector in manufacturing, financial services and international trade before being elected to his first term in the House of Representatives in 1998, that’s not where he may be headed. In fact, I was the one who informed him he has been short-listed to become DepEd Secretary, possibly when the acting OIC, the very capable Dr. Fe Hidalgo retires.

Come what may, Rep. Lapus who has performed brilliantly in Congress, chairing Suffrage and Electoral Reform, and the Congressional Oversight Committee, as well as Ways and Means and Appropriations, will do well in whatever Cabinet post he gets. He has already served in the Cabinets of two previous Presidents, former Presidents Corazon C. Aquino (now La Gloria’s bete noir) and Fidel V. Ramos. Moving from a well-upholstered and lucrative life in the private sector to specializing in Development Work and Rural Finance in the public service, Lapus, as president and CEO of the Land Bank of the Philippines (1992-1998) steered that bank from a lowly number 18 position to become the third biggest in the banking industry and best-performing Government Financial Institution (GFI). He’s been dubbed the "father" of the LandBank Charter of 1995, although at age 42 then, he had been the youngest president to take the helm of that institution.

Asian Finance called him the "Management Whiz Kid in the ASEAN" (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and he was installed in the Hall of Fame as Outstanding Legislator for four consecutive years (2000 to 2004) by the Makati Graduate School and Congress Magazine.

A CPA, MBA and DPA, Lapus was in the original core faculty of the Asian Institute of Management’s Masters in Development Management Program. He taught for many years in the Ateneo de Manila University, Maryknoll College (now Miriam) and conducted Executive Training Courses in Indonesia and Malaysia. To elaborate on the alphabet soup of degrees mentioned above, Jesli has a Doctorate in Public Administration honoris causa from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), a Masters in Business Management from AIM (1973), and is a Certified Public Accountant (1969).

What might make him popular among teachers is the fact that in Congress, Rep. Lapus in 2003 exposed an infamous multi-billion peso automatic payroll deductions scheme at the Department of Education which ate disastrously into the take-home pay of some 300,000 public school teachers. For busting this racket, Lapus was named "Champion of Public School Teachers" by teachers’ associations.

Anyway, while there’s still many a slip twixt cup and lip (other influential legislators covet the DepEd post), Lapus is seeded to get it. That’s the buzz.

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The new envoy of Pakistan, H.E. Ambassador Muhammad Naeem Khan, I must say, is both urbane and very articulate. Over a congenial lunch at the Tivoli in the Mandarin Oriental, the Ambassador, accompanied by his First Secretary, Zahoor Ahmed, discussed the great strides taken by modern Pakistan under President (and General) Pervez Musharraf and the ongoing fight against terrorism.

Although this writer had been covering Pakistan decades ago, operating out of Lahore and Pindi, I haven’t been there for many years, so an update from Ambassador Khan – who’s recently arrived, having presented his credentials to GMA only last December 5 – was both welcome and refreshing.

Pakistan, of course, now has a population of more than 149 million and, although dwarfed in number of people by neighboring India (which also, incidentally, has 142 million Muslims), maintains a strong military disproportionate to its size. For it remains in dispute with India over Kashmir, and borders on Afghanistan, where – on the borderlands and Tribal Areas – the Taleban and perhaps Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda continue to operate.

Ambassador Khan is quite at home with the media, having been Official Spokesman of the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad from May to September 2005, before getting transferred to the Philippines. This was evident from the ease with which our conversation jumped from topic to topic.

While young (he was born on May 28, 1957), the Pakistani envoy has served in some of the juiciest capitals in the world – in Madrid (1986-1988); in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen (1988-1994); in Washington DC (1997-2000) and in Beijing (2000-2003). On my prodding, the Ambassador revealed that his most delightful assignment had been Spain, but his most "rewarding" and interesting posting had been in the People’s Republic of China. He did enjoy working in the United States’ capital, where he spent almost four years, but DC was third in his scale of fascinating assignments.

Also having worked as Director General of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Ministry from August 2003 to November 2005, Ambassador Khan recalled that his country and the Philippines were old "allies," going as far back as the years in which we both belonged to the now-defunct anti-Communist alliance, the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) created by the Manila Pact, but with its headquarters in Bangkok. SEATO is long gone, and most of its original members have been scrambling to proclaim everlasting friendship with the People’s Republic of China, but those were the good old days of anti-Red certainty. Oh well. I trust we’re still somewhat united in the fight against terrorism.

Is Osama still hiding out in Pakistan or thereabouts? Nobody can answer that, not even General Pervez Musharraf, now firmly allied with the US in that field of combat. Which is why Pakistan must, day to day, maintain no less than 80,000 troops on its borders – with Afghanistan and, don’t forget, India.

The Ambassador, knowing full well that our good old RP is a matriarchy, political as well as actual, didn’t forget to stress that 33 percent of his nation’s Parliament, with 72 women MPs, is composed of women. And that Pakistan is now racking up an 8.4 percent economic growth.

Why, that’s not far from China’s 9.9 percent.