The secret plan to dump more buses into EDSA

Everybody knows that when agency heads are summoned to appear at Congressional Budget hearings they come "prepared" with rosy statistics about their supposed accomplishments and what they intend to accomplish. The idea is to get their budgets increased, or at least prevent a reduction of their budgets.

When Chairperson Ma. Elena Bautista of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) appeared before the Senate last Monday for the DOTC Budget hearing, she concurred with Sen. Serge Osmeña that there are simply too many buses plying our most important artery, EDSA. As a result of having too many buses on the road, traffic on the nation’s most important boulevard is a daily nightmare, both agreed. Bautista pledged to reduce the number of buses on EDSA by 50 percent before the end of the year.

Normally, such a pledge which was published in all the newspapers would have cheered me up because this column has for the past six years been bewailing the traffic gridlock on EDSA and insisting that all 15-year old secondhand "junk" smoke-belching buses imported from Japan and franchised by the LTFRB must be scrapped. However, when Bautista promised Senator Osmeña to reduce the 5,000 buses now plying EDSA by half by the end of the year this public vow did not jibe with her actions. Who’s she kidding?

The truth is that Bautista’s own memorandum circulars belie her bold statement before the Senate. Alas, she’s actually doing the opposite. Under an LTFRB Memo circular dated September 2, 2005 local provincial bus routes within provinces and regions far from Metro Manila are allowed to extend the route of their buses to Metro Manila. This means that hundreds, if not thousands of buses franchised within provinces and regions will soon be plying Metro Manila routes, particularly EDSA. Although she deferred this memo circular in a subsequent circular, Bautista recently okayed the acceptance of petitions to extend local routes to Cubao in Quezon City. Already, 19 petitions to extend routes in the Cagayan Valley to Cubao in Quezon City have been accepted by the LTFRB. I won’t say that Ms. Bautista is being kind to her comprobinsyanos but, by coincidence, she hails from Tuguegarao, Cagayan.

In sum, why is Chairman Bautista telling the Senate one thing and doing the opposite when she gets back to her office? If she keeps on allowing provincial buses to cram themselves into Cubao – which is already heavily congested – the traffic on EDSA will double, not be reduced by 50 percent. Is there something wrong with her arithmetic – or did she doublespeak?

Bautista gets away, I hear, with a lot of things because she has successfully created the impression that she is very close to President GMA. For example, she has managed to defy her own boss, Transportation and Communications Secretary Larry Mendoza on a number of occasions. Yet, her reputed "closeness" to La Presidenta seems contrived. True, she came from the PMS (Presidential Management Staff) but once, when this writer asked GMA whether the hot rumor was true that Ms. Bautista would be elevated to the Cabinet, a frown crossed the brow of GMA, and she snapped, "No."

When La Gloria discovers that Ms. Bautista’s arithmetic is faulty, she won’t even make her an assistant to DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno who’s the Mathematical Wizard of the Administration. Right now, Interior and Local Government Secretary Puno is supposed to be handling the Cha-Cha "people’s initiative" in the Barangays. Pardon me if I suspect that giving Puno the supervision of the "people’s initiative" in the Barangays is just a smoke screen. How can such a "people’s initiative" be valid if there exists no enabling law for it, as required by the Constitution? My suspicion – of course, I could be wrong – is that Puno and his boys are merely establishing their network in the Barangays by the expensive process of trying to push through such an initiative, when they’re actually gearing up for the 2007 elections.

In order to "reaffirm" her hold on the Presidency, despite all those "Hello Garci" accusations of cheating, it’s imperative that GMA’s party win resoundingly in the 2007 polls. This would confirm that the people (that unflattering Pulse Asia survey notwithstanding) still love GMA.

And this is where, perhaps, Ronnie Puno comes in.

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If it’s true that the real target of the Jolo bomber was the Roman Catholic Cathedral, the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group was certainly behind the bomb attack. But why was it done so clumsily, with the explosive device being detonated in such an insignificant place?

Which reminds us of the fact that the government has been coddling imprisoned former ARMM Governor and Moro National Liberation Front Rebel Nur Misuari by allowing him to spend more than a month and a half in St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City undergoing special "medical" treatment. Now, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has even said that he is in favor of "house arrest" for Misuari.

I don’t mean to impugn the actions of the RTC Court trying the Misuari Case, but everybody believes that the renegade whose rebellion cost dozens of lives is being given the kid-glove treatment because Misuari has promised to keep his men down in Sulu quiet and, more importantly, help in the pacification process. The Jolo bomb explosion indicates that Misuari may have less influence in Sulu than he pretends.

He ought to be sent back to jail where he belongs.

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Over the past few days, I’ve been reading lurid tales about an Enron-type corporate scam being undertaken in local circles. On closer inspection it seems to me that the reports may be maliciously circulated by disgruntled individuals who have an axe to grind against major business concerns in this country.

The terrible Enron scam, particularly since the multi-billion dollar scandal was based in Houston, Texas, the home state of no less than President George W. Bush was of monstrous proportions. Enron’s former Chief Executives, Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, now facing trial, were bare-faced liars who inflated their "profits" and grossly exaggerated their business "coups" while the cupboard was already empty, with most of the loot either bulging in their own pockets or invested in luxury properties, defrauding the scores of thousands of stockholders whose pensions and dreams had been invested in their crumbling house of cards.

A typical facet of that scam, as ferreted out from internal documents seized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), had the Enron bosses creating phantom shortages in California’s unregulated electricity market so they could fleece ratepayers of $30 billion at the height of the 2001 energy crisis. The cynical schemes even bore dramatic code names like "Death Star," "Load Shift," and "Fat Boy."

There was no end to the greedy imagination of Messieurs Skilling, Lay, and company. Even Andrew Fastow, the former Enron Chief Finance Officer (CFO) who’s now turned state witness against his former bosses and colleagues, confessed that he had taken part in the secretive transactions which inflated the company’s earnings, but tried to mitigate his own villainy by asserting "I thought I was being a hero for Enron." What made his "heroism" less credible was the fact that his participation had enabled him to substantially pad his own bank account.

This is why I find it ridiculous that the suspicion is being fostered that some local corporations may be manipulating trade practices for their own benefit and for the detriment of their business partners. After the Enron scandal exploded like a nuclear bomb, how could any local firm have the effrontery and gall to copycat their discredited tactics?

Our nation is in business difficulties, no thanks to the endless political turmoil engendered by wannabes who want to replace GMA in the premier position of leadership but instead are fouling their own nests, plus the persistent, self-perpetuating rumors of unrest in the military. Any strange insinuations that there’s hanky-panky in certain boardrooms and corporations only result in destroying business confidence in our country.

The truth is precisely because of the Enron scam, there is little leeway for corporations, regulators and auditors to connive, or hatch anything Machiavellian, because here, as all over the world, stricter measures have been put in place to prevent another Enron scandal. There are so many examining bodies looking over your shoulder, it is easier to be a terrorist than foolishly attempt a business scam.

Enough of all this nitpicking and dakdak. What we must do is put our shoulders to the wheel, and get this nation – mired in disappointment and self-doubt – moving confidently forward again.