JocJoc Bolante ‘arrested’ in L.A.? Is this a joke or the real thing?

It’s a bizarre story that the fugitive Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture, who’s been humiliating our government and especially the Senate by skipping in and out of the country, but escaping any summons to get to testify on his alleged role in the multi-million peso "fertilizer" election time scandal, has finally been nabbed in Los Angeles by United States authorities.

I can say it’s about time somebody grabbed this dickhead who’s been blithely ignoring every "warrant" issued by the Senate to compel him to appear so he can shed light on the fertilizer funds that disgustingly went astray. But why did the American government agencies grab JocJoc this time, after all the months he’s been in "hiding" right in the City of Fallen Angels? Is there a court case pending against him here which could merit our government demanding his extradition? In truth, I think most of the big shots of the GMA government would rather keep him out of sight, than drag him back home to sing like a canary.

Did his US visa "expire", thereby prompting the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to take him into custody like some TNT or Mexican wetback? Sus, the Bush government has sent the National Guard to help the border patrols keep illegals (including drug smugglers) out of the USA on the Rio Grande side of the frontier with Mexico, but Bolante who’s right in their backyard might not rate top-priority.

As this writer reported several months ago, JocJoc had very visibly lived in style in an apartment not far from LAX, the Los Angeles International Airport. He might have since moved somewhere else since but he remained, in truth, quite traceable.

The tale we got yesterday was that Bolante was in the pokey and needed somebody to post bail for him in the amount of $100,000. The next detail, which "surfaced" was that our Consul-General in Los Angeles, Ambassador Willy C. Gaa, had been "instructed" by the GMA government to go "bail him out."

If that’s true, La Presidenta had better think twice about involving Consul-General Gaa in this sordid matter.

To begin with, the Administration being over-solicitous about the welfare of that running man, a fugitive who had defied our laws by ducking an investigation into his conduct as a ranking official and might prove a vital witness to what has been touted by the Opposition and the media as an electoral scandal, might be construed as a "confession" almost as damning as the "Hello Garci" I am sorry TV apology which continues to plague La Presidenta.

Let Bolante rot in jail, then, if we can finesse it get the Americans to extradite him back to us to face the music in his homeland. But to dispatch Ambassador Gaa to "fix" the matter would destroy Gaa’s prospects of ever becoming our next Ambassador to Washington DC.

What is GMA’s priority? To "rescue" JocJoc who played a joke on all of us, or get Gaa named to Washington DC? For if Gaa gets involved with bailing out the Fertilizer Man, the cow manure will be all over him. If he gets nominated Ambassador to the United States, the Commission on Appointments, led by the angry Senator-members of that Congressional vetting agency in full cry, would give Gaa – to paraphrase the Chinese – the "Death of a Thousand Cuts" and reject his confirmation.

Give Bolante the boot and save Willy Gaa is my earnest advice. Take it or leave it.

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It’s great news that the President has finally named Tarlac Congressman Jesli A. Lapus the new DepEd Secretary.

Those nasty "protesters" now filling the air with their insulting and obnoxious noise, claiming to be the "union" representing the DepEd employees and teachers are just Great Pretenders who speak for few but their own rowdy selves.

It’s time a DepEd Secretary stopped being "bullied" by those bellicose characters who want to run the Department of Education their own way, and, if we don’t watch out, into the ground.

Our DepEd is below zero already, thanks to the antics of such would-be manipulators and the hidebound bureaucrats and ignoramuses who infect the decision-making (or lack of decision) in that vital department. No wonder we lack classrooms, our standards are shoddy, not only our public schools but too many teachers and principals are underpaid, even uneducated themselves and shabby.

Both my parents came from the Public School system – and that system used to be grand in their time, turning out the best and the brightest. Look at it now – the shame of our nation.

Textbook scandals, smalltime racketeering, kids without a roof over their heads, or sitting on the floor or in the mud – if they can even get in. These are the youth (now underprivileged) whom our national hero once described as "the fair hope of our Motherland." The kids themselves have lost hope, the teachers have lost focus, and the principals literally cannot be distinguished from school janitor – if a janitor even exists.

If anything needs help in our country, it’s our creaky, lame, and fast-deteriorating school system. Other countries in Asia have long ago passed us by, when half a century ago we were the envy of the neighborhood.

This is why a tough guy, brilliant and savvy, a gutsy topnotch "turnaround" engineer like Jesli Lapus is desperately needed to give a shot in the arm to the decrepit DepEd – and lead us back to glory. Do I give Jesli too much praise? Let him get on the job, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. This is precisely why the mediocre in our educational set-up fear him – and would dearly wish to repel him.

Contrary to false rumor, Lapus is not being "given only one year in office." His appointment is open-ended. He will serve as boss in the DepEd for as many years as he performs well – which may be three to four years, depending on how he does and how he likes his task.

In truth, La Presidenta wanted to appoint Lapus more than a month ago, but she had told me that Jesli himself requested a postponement.

Yesterday, I asked Lapus why he had asked for postponement of his appointment to the Cabinet. He chuckled sheepishly and replied: "I wanted to remain a Congressman so I could attend one last SONA (State of the Nation Address) as a member of our legislature."

Was that a frivolous desire? He sounded quite earnest. Indeed, Jesli will sit in the Congressional audience on Monday, July 24, when the Chief Executive addresses the joint Houses in the Batasan. Lapus will be there as the representative of the people of Tarlac. He had been given by the Tarlaqueños the unprecedented honor of running for reelection for a third term unopposed by any rival candidate in the May 2004 elections. In short, Congressman Lapus had been deemed unbeatable.

And on July 31, he will honorably bid goodbye to his admiring constituents to take on the unenviable but challenging burden of helping our entire nation’s youth get a decent education.

That’s the long and short of it.

* * *

I’ll make no bones about it. I’ve long believed that somebody like Jesli, who fought his way up – like Ninoy – as the youngest and most energetic best relate with our young, which is what education is all about.

To take just one example: as the youngest (aged 42 years) President and CEO or the Land Bank of the Philippines from 1992 to 1998, he steered that badly-listing Bank from the pitiful number 18 position to become the third biggest in the banking industry.

You don’t achieve this by counting paper clips, or sitting in fat-assed splendor in the Board Room, but by git-up-and-go. He transformed the Land Bank into the best-performing GFI (Government Financial Institution). He’s been dubbed the "Father" of the LandBank Charter of 1995 which strengthened and energized that once-moribund institution and get it the prized national award for outstanding cooperatives, the "Gawad Pitak."

Let’s begin at the beginning. Simply let me quote the Asian Institute of Management’s article on him, entitled "Alumni in Focus." After all, at 29 years of age, he was the youngest recipient of the top AIM alumnus honor, "The Triple A Award" in 1980 for outstanding achievements in the field of management.

The admiring article states:

"Such could be said of Jesli Lapus. At a young age, he always achieved what others took time to finish. He was a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) at the age of 19, an auditor in charge of corporate clients at 20, a master’s degree holder at 23, the youngest corporate executive at 23, the youngest and first Filipino to head the Philippine subsidiary of a German multinational at 29, a Presidential Cabinet member at 36, the youngest president of a major bank at 42, and a member of Philippine Congress at 48."

"At 31, he was featured as a management whiz kid in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) by the Hong Kong based financial publications, Asian Finance.

In fact, a consistent topnotcher in the dean’s list in college, Jesli had completed his college education in three years.

In Congress, he had been installed in the Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding Legislator for five consecutive years" for 2000-2004 by the Makati Graduate School and Congress Magazine.

As Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, Lapus had sought and achieved the vital 2005 fiscal reforms, helping save our country from economic crisis. As Chairman of the House Committee on Suffrage and Fiscal Reforms he had sponsored the Overseas Absentee Voting Law permitting overseas Filipinos to vote during the 2005 elections. Alas, some congressmen had inserted "conditions" in this law which did not make its implementation as successful as had been hoped. He had sponsored the World Trade Organization (WTO) safeguard measures in 1999. We could go on and on, but these facts are in his Curriculum Vitae.

As an educator, he had – as CPA, MBA, and DPA – been an original in the core faculty of the AIM’s Master’s in Development Management Program, and taught for many years in the Ateneo de Manila, Maryknoll (now Miriam) College, and conducted executive training courses in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In Congress, he had even exposed the infamous multi-billion peso "automatic payroll deductions" racket in the Department of Education which had plagued more than 300,000 public school teachers and drained them of morale.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. Lapus had dinner in the Palace last night with GMA to get his marching orders. Now watch his smoke.

I trust we won’t be disappointed.

Get in there and fight, Lapus! You’re biggest battles lie ahead.