1,687 exam re-takers were not cheaters

Hey wait, not so fast. Despite Friday’s Court of Appeals ruling on the nursing exam fraud, the problem is not over. Responsibility shirkers at the Professional Regulation Commission cannot just sweep it under the rug by rushing to swear in all but 1,687 exam passers.

Three reasons compel the PRC to prudence. One, as Malacañang cautions, some parties might still contest the ruling. Two, contrary to the PRC’s publicized interpretation, the Court did not rule to swear in all 17,000 passers nationwide, but only those who clearly did not benefit from leakage of questionnaires. Three, while the Court ruled on the legal aspect of the to-do, the PRC has yet to face the larger issue: the taint on Filipino nurses and professional licensing.

On the first point, events already have overtaken the PRC. The Santo Tomas University nursing faculty and students, along with a nurses’ group, filed a motion Monday to reverse the Court ruling. In their mind, although unsupported by evidence heaped by the NBI, the cheating was nationwide, so the exam retake must also be nationwide. Litigants usually have 15 days to challenge a court ruling, so the earliest the PRC may swear in any passer, counting from Friday if nobody contests the ruling, is Oct. 28.

PRC chair Leonor Rosero should know that. In Senate hearings she constantly stressed that she consults her lawyers for her every move. Last Monday hundreds of anxious passers crowded into the PRC main office to be sworn in, but were told that Malacañang had stopped the rites. Bitterly disappointed they blamed everyone except the PRC that had led them on.

The misleading began with the false construal that the Court granted the PRC’s wish to swear in all 17,000 passers. That is farthest from the truth. What the Court did was let the PRC administer the nurses’ oath on passers who appear to not have benefited from the leakage. These obviously are passers from five of seven test sites; the NBI identified only Manila and Baguio to have been marred by fraud.

Impliedly the passers from Manila and Baguio must retake the exam. It need not be that messy, though. If the PRC does its job instead of taking the path of least resistance, it can narrow down further the number of re-takers. Not arbitrarily all examinees from Manila and Baguio would be compelled to retake, but only those who reviewed at three leaky centers – Inress, Gapuz and Pentagon. Plus, of course, attendees at a "final session" of seven schools at a Manila cinema house during which the questions were divulged.

For letting misleading reports pass, the PRC has soiled the 1,687 passers whom the Court slated for retake. Contrary to sweeping remarks of interloping politicos like Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the 1,687 never cheated. They were only so grouped because the PRC, after at first denying leaks of Tests 3 and 5, tried to plug it months later by re-computing the scores. The PRC scrapped 20 questions from Test 3 and added weight to the remaining 80; it also junked 90 questions from Test 5 and gave away any correct answer to remaining 10 as bonus to the final scores. As a result, 1,687 examinees who originally had flunked suddenly made the grade. So if they benefited from anything, it’s not from the leakage but the PRC’s re-computation – an act now branded as illegal by the Commission on Filipinos Overseas.

CFO chairman Dante Ang intervened in the crisis because of its effect on the country’s image. For a year he had been working on the holding in Manila of the annual US nursing licensure exams. That way, Filipino nurses seeking greener pastures would not have to fly to Tokyo or Hong Kong to take a shot at it. The leakage caught world attention. The PRC made it worse by first hiding it and then re-computing the scores in violation of the Nursing Profession Code. The brouhaha not only has spoiled the chances of Manila as an exam site. It also has scared local hospitals from hiring any of the June examinees.

Repairing a damaged reputation can be long and arduous. PRC chair Rosero’s aim, however, is to just get the oath taking over and done with. In August, when the Court was about to take jurisdiction over the case, she rushed the swear-in of 6,000 of the 17,000 passers. Severely criticized for pre-empting the judiciary, she just shrugged. To date, however, only 2,000 of the 6,000 have been issued licenses because that it how slow the PRC is with its normal duties. But when asked if the NBI findings of fraud in Manila and Baguio means the PRC will have to repossess the licenses of those issued from those sites, Rosero turned adamant. No way may the PRC or even Malacañang revoke licenses, for what’s done is done. This is reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt sending the US Navy on a saber-rattling expedition halfway across the globe without Congress consent, and then demanding that legislators appropriate money for the return trip lest the Great White Fleet be stranded far from American shores.

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Agriculture Sec. Domingo Panganiban was guest of honor at the National Tuna Congress held recently in General Santos City. Dir. Malcolm Sarmiento of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources was in town too for the big fisheries event. But when Panganiban arrived at the venue, Sarmiento was nowhere to be found. Only when his boss left did the latter suddenly pop up again.

Talk at the agriculture office is that a major rift has erupted between the two. The cause? Rationalization, the government term for the private sector’s rightsizing, which ordinary folk know to be downsizing.

When the 1998 Fisheries Code came into law, many of the BFAR’s line functions were devolved to local governments. Necessarily the BFAR staff had to be knocked down, either by retrenchment or transfer to city halls and provincial capitols.

A rationalization plan includes the conversion of the BFAR from a line agency into a staff office under the agriculture secretary. Panganiban reportedly wants this done fast. Sarmiento and BFAR old-timers don’t. Streamers and placards have sprung up in agriculture branches, including faraway Bonggao in Tawi-Tawi, proclaiming "No to Rationalization." Rationalization has its benefits. But it also involves the difficult task of keeping only qualified personnel. Marine conservationist NGOs would want to help Sarmiento identify the able staff. After all, they have had good working relations when he gave volunteer coast patrols speedboats to chase away illegal fishers. But Sarmiento’s opposition to conversion of the BFAR into a staff office has made him cling to the wrong underlings.

Two recent reports of whale beaching illustrate the conservationists’ fears. BFAR field men misidentified the dying mammals on the beaches of Dagupan and Zamboanga cities as Risso’s dolphins. But from news photos and videos, the one in Dagupan was a pygmy killer whale; that in Zamboanga was a short finned pilot whale. The giant creatures occupy different spaces in the ocean column, and perform different ecological balancing roles. Right identification is important to at least know which of the 26 species of whales abound in Philippine waters.

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