Boncodin, a rare kind of public servant

It was sometime in 2003 while on my way to work that late morning when I found a rare kind of career public official. I was still pounding the Malacañang Palace beat at that time. As traffic crawled, I spotted two stalled cars in the middle of the MIAA Road in Parañaque City. As our car passed by the apparent traffic accident, I noticed a very familiar face standing beside the car that was bumped from behind by the other vehicle. It was only then I recognized that it was Department of Budget and Management (DBM) secretary Emilia “Emmie” Boncodin.

She traveled without any security escort and using an obviously rundown government service car that did not even have a “6” car plate, number for a Cabinet official like her. The DBM Secretary was alone with her driver who was arguing with the other driver of the vehicle in the heat of the late morning sun.

I stopped our car at the corner of the road and I walked to her direction. Upon seeing me, I saw her face lit up as if someone had answered her prayers. The soft-spoken Boncodin was rather more amused than angry while telling me about the accident. She came from a meeting in one of the government offices and was on her way back to her office at the DBM located in the Palace area.

While reading some documents at the back seat, she was suddenly thrust forward after her car was bumped from behind. In obvious nervous laughter, Boncodin told me she and her driver were thankfully not seriously hurt.

But still I detected urgency in her voice that she could not afford to stay long and wait for the two drivers to settle this minor traffic accident. She apparently had not mentioned the fact to the other party in this traffic mess that she was a Cabinet official of President Arroyo.

I was half-amused over this incident but full of respect and admiration for this Cabinet official. I offered to bring the DBM Secretary to where she was going. She obliged to ride with us to the Palace after giving her driver quick instructions. I teased her that I would exact payback from her by giving me exclusive stories. That finally made her laugh more relaxed and finally relieved to realize she was safe and sound.

I wrote about this incident and it appeared at The STAR the next day. She called me up to thank me again for “rescuing” her. And because of this incident, she laughingly told me, she was being given a new service car.

Two years later, former Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye sadly announced to us Palace reporters that Boncodin was going on medical leave to undergo a kidney transplant surgery. When I went to her office, Boncodin expressed amusement about the “fuss” being made in media about her ailment and undergoing kidney transplant. She reassured me that it was not any life-threatening surgery and that no less than the chief of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Dr. Enrique Ona, was her attending physician.

“This is just a preventive measure because I don’t want to go into dialysis, which I heard, is very, very painful,” Boncodin explained to me. She was first diagnosed as suffering from “polycystic kidney” or multiple kidney cysts that were congenital. Her doctors found her cysts benign but these cysts have been causing her uncontrolled hypertension.

She was 50 years old then but laughingly likened herself to a pregnant woman because of her swollen belly due to her kidney ailment. The transplant was a success because the donor was her younger sister who gave her a “perfect” match kidney. Human beings have two kidneys and we can live with one healthy kidney. She reported back for work after a two-month leave of absence.

These memories came flooding back to me after news broke out on Monday that Boncodin died of cardiac arrest at the NKTI in Quezon City. It was Dr. Ona who confirmed the demise of his patient. She was 55.

Ona disclosed that Boncodin was rushed to the NKTI on March 10 “for difficulty of breathing and anemia and was diagnosed to be on end-stage renal disease after her kidney transplant done on Feb. 3, 2005 went into chronic rejection and had completely failed to function.”

The kidney transplant was performed months before Boncodin, along with nine other Cabinet secretaries, resigned en masse in July that same year in the aftermath of the electoral fraud charges against President Arroyo dubbed as “Hello, Garci” scandal. The group was later christened as the “Hyatt 10” because they announced their resignation at the Hyatt Hotel in Pasay City. The “Hyatt 10” resignation triggered calls for the President to step down from office and the subsequent impeachment attempt against her in Congress in the wake of the “Hello, Garci” scandal.

The nine officials who resigned with Boncodin included Florencio Abad of Education, Corazon Soliman of Social Welfare, Rene Villa of Agrarian Reform, Imelda Nicolas of National Anti-Poverty Commission, Cesar Purisima of Finance, Juan Santos of Trade and Industry, Alberto Lina of Customs, Guillermo Parayno of Internal Revenue and peace adviser Teresita Deles.

Yes, the late DBM Secretary was one of the “Hyatt 10” but she was never like any one of them. Boncodin was a decent former Cabinet official who did not speak ill of her former Chief Executive. She resigned from the Arroyo Cabinet along with them but kept her peace and equanimity.

From then on, Boncodin just went about her usual low-key, unassuming ways. She continued with her professorial job and some consultancy work at the sides. Palace reporters fondly remembered her as one Cabinet official who did not walk with any aide-de-camp to carry her files and piles of documents, she herself clutched them in her arms.

She rose from the ranks at the DBM until she first became the Secretary in January 1998 under former President Fidel Ramos. Boncodin returned as DBM chief when President Arroyo took over the government in January 2001 until she joined “Hyatt 10.” But Boncodin has remained a true public servant until she breathed her last. 

While she was no longer in government service anymore, she did what she loved most, teaching best practices in public finance and public administration. In fact, she treated reporters like students and patiently answered their questions with utmost transparency and clarity. The Philippine bureaucracy has lost an outstanding public servant.