Joey S.’s debut as economic briefer

Newly-minted Presidential Chief of Staff Joey Salceda, in office for all of two days, must be trying very hard to live up to Boss and former college economics professor GMA’s billing of him as one of her best students who may have even risen above his teacher. Now that’s an undeniably high complement, and Joey soon gave evidence of how his mind sometimes works faster than his tongue. (I’m praising you here, Joey!)

In a super-speed power point presentation packed with government-sourced statistics, which Joey nevertheless made clear he had no reason to doubt, the ultimate conclusions were indubitable: Among many goodies, the economy is definitely on the move. We’re doing much better now than in the past — "24 quarters of continuous growth" since the President took over in 2000, he underscored.

The figures are, of course, difficult to dispute if you don’t have your own contrasting statistics. I also heard a bit of grumbling around and about me about the interpretation, as well as the completeness, of those figures. But since the nay-sayers didn’t have statistics on hand either, I guess the GMA economic managers will say they were just being their characteristically grumpy selves.

The undeniable fact is that the suits and barong lukot-yaman crowd are beside themselves with joy at the "velocity" with which the economy has been moving to positive ground. Just look, they say, at the much lower budget deficit. "The budget will be balanced by next year," Ma’m enthused, casting a smile and a meaningful glance directly at Finance Secretary Gary Teves.

Look at that new regional wonder, the fabulous peso, whose value is increasing even as we speak. Behold the queues of foreign and, she and Joey stressed, domestic investors. Who can fail to notice the booming stock market, the new favorite of hot money traffickers, and those unstoppable OFW remittances of foreign exchange, our international reserves which have hit all-time highs.

Consider the falling prices in the international market of our government bonds, thus clearly indicating how traders are stumbling all over themselves in the race to grab said bonds for their portfolios.

Joey, amidst the staccato "next, next, next" orders he kept barking to a harassed power point operator, sought to back up the claims the President made in her own speech earlier to the economic media. He had been in office for only two days, he explained. He had to impress his Boss. That he did, except to those who were hearing him for the first time and weren’t familiar with his rat-tat-tat, hypertensive style of "briefing."

Or was it because he had very little time before he had to rush next door to a bigger hall where he was due to stand beside Central Bank briefers giving basically the same talk to the financial and corporate elite. The audience before him was, after all, made up mostly of "economic journalists" who, he said, would be given hard copies of his presentation and would be fully expected to understand what he was talking about.

Anyway, the substantives aside (and we would have to admit there was quite a lot to chew on), someone’s got to give Joey the unsolicited advice that his absent-minded professor style of haranguing graduate students simply won’t work with serious journalists who want to cross-examine him on every decimal point and micro dot of the statistics he proffers.

After all, a "pithy" but sober presentation, given in reasonably-paced cadence, always trumps a breathless and somewhat truncated recitation of facts which cry out for correlation and elaboration, even before a pretty knowledgeable audience. Otherwise, you’re begging for skepticism and contradiction.

Further, your audience might think you’re treating them like dumbbells, which that group of assembled foreign and local economic writers and business leaders certainly was not. But, let’s face it, they’ve heard this story before, and may better appreciate a spokesperson who doesn’t mind being occasionally, even constantly, challenged.

Joey remarked during his presentation that we may only have three more years to get a lot of economic work done, for example, the GMA team’s admirable determination to achieve three-year annual growth rates of 6, 7 and 8 percent starting 2007.

On my way out of the hall, I met the new Presidential Chief of Staff, and kidded him about slowing down, lest hyperactivity in the face of unremitting work pressure cause him not to be around at the end of that three-year period. His hurried response floored me: At the rate he was driving himself, he said, he wasn’t expecting to be around. That would be a pity. Who’s going to face media, when the day of reckoning comes? We should have Joey around to bask in some of the plaudits, or we should have him to kick around.

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Judging from the reaction I got from our column on that leadership crisis at the Chang Kai Shek College, it seems quite a number of alumni are upset that the matter remains unresolved.

Well, the latest is that a special stockholders meeting has been called by the company. At that meeting, I would suppose, the matter of the election of a non-member of the non-profit corporation to the Board of Trustees and as the new Chairman would be finally resolved. But looking at the agenda for the special meeting, I can’t see any item which faces the crisis squarely.

What the incumbent but beleaguered leadership wants, it would seem, is to obtain ratification from the corporation’s members of all of their acts in the past year. That, as any half-wit can see, would encompass its controversial conduct of the last election of members of the Board of Trustees, and of officers, which happens to be the crux of litigation now pending, all irrelevancies and legalistic mumbo-jumbo aside.

I would still hope reason will prevail, and that the conflicting sides play by rules already prescribed by the articles of incorporation and by-laws. That would seem pretty basic. On the other hand, I don’t really know whether a power play is in progress, even in this non-profit educational institution which has been around for more than half a century. Could it be a replay of the epochal conflict between Chiang and his nemesis Mao Tse-tung? Abangan.