Ping

The most decent member of the Noynoy Aquino Cabinet resigned yesterday. There is a paucity of explanation for why this happened and a thick cloud of speculation about the event.

Jose “Ping” de Jesus is a gentleman of the old school. That is important to understand why his letter of resignation is bare as could be. The Transport and Communications secretary simply said he was resigning his post for “personal reasons.”

No one seemed prepared for Ping’s resignation. The President was in Brunei when news broke. The overpopulated “communications group” had no official version ready. The resignation was confirmed, with scarcest detail, by the spokesman of the DOTC.

The fact that the Palace appeared blindsided by Ping’s resignation says a mouthful, however. Usually, for a development as significant as this one, the Palace breaks the news. Before that, the appropriate staff work is done quietly to ensure a smooth transition and a credible replacement. The spin is managed tightly.

There was none of that yesterday — and not just because columnists like this one are not part of Edwin Lacierda’s blessed “information loop.” We can only imagine Lacierda giving us his best impression of a deer in the headlights.

Ping is unlike some of his colleagues in the Noynoy Cabinet. One colleague has been publicly overruled time and again and yet finds it convenient to remain in the thankless service. His colleagues in the “communications group” have nothing to show for the money they spent and yet maintain a happy obliviousness about that.

Ping is not identified with any of the factions contesting control over the Palace, which is why we see no one celebrating his departure. Ping, unlike his boss, is not given to needless public blabbering — which is why we know very little about what brought him grief.

Nevertheless, we know there were some differences between Ping and his erstwhile boss. The most visible of these is the handling of the case of Virginia Torres, LTO chief-on-leave.

After Torres so blatantly participated in the curious and unwarranted takeover of the Stradcom facility, Ping wanted her sacked. The President dilly-dallied. Then, after the DOJ too recommended her fired, the President allowed his friend to go on leave.

That did not stop Torres from exerting tremendous pressure on Stradcom, perhaps with the end in view of forcing the majority stakeholders of the technology provider to finally yield control to the minority group. To this day, Stradcom has not been paid its share of LTO service fees, seriously jeopardizing the company’s financial sustainability. 

It was Torres to froze payments of Stradcom’s share of the service revenues. Lately, there have been rumors Torres will be reinstalled by the President — over, presumably, the DOTC’s objections.

There are other issues, as well, involving the new cronies of this administration. But until Ping talks about these issues, everything will be merely speculative.

We are not sure how much the DOTC has accomplished under Ping’s shortened leadership. No major projects have been unveiled. The much-touted Public-Private Partnerships that should help relieve the miserable state of our transport and communications infrastructure remains in limbo.

Public bidding

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile suggested that resources in the public domain — such as radio bandwidth — be allocated on the basis of public bidding. We suggest that he put that down as law.

Enrile made the observation in the course of the Senate hearing last Tuesday called to inquire into the repercussions of the PLDT-Digitel deal. That observation is consistent with the best practices in governance.

The practice in our country is rather antiquated — and prone to corruption. Radio bandwidth is awarded by way of a congressional franchise. Government earns very little from the franchise award. Urban legend, however, says that lawmakers actually make a lot of money on the sly from their power to award franchises.

Since private companies actually spend money in bribes, they will likely not complain about allocating public resources by way of open bidding. At least, in a public bidding, the deal is transparent and the revenue flows entirely into the public coffers. By awarding scarce public resources through open bidding, government gets the best deal and private companies book the real market value of the franchise they acquire.

For too long, the practice here was for politicians in power to award not just radio bandwidth but also concessions for natural resource exploitation as favors to friends and supporters. That does not guarantee the best return to the public nor that the awardees will be the best users of the resource. Only by way of a public bidding will there be real price discovery and most efficient use of the franchises.

After all, how many times has it happened that people win franchises or licenses and sit on them speculatively until they are able to sell them to a third party. There are so many stories of politically influential people making a fortune out of the secondary market for franchises.

The reason why there tends to be overspending in Philippine elections is because people “invest” in candidates, making large campaign contributions in expectation of favors later when the candidate wins. Those favors come in the form of contracts or awards of franchises.

It is time to modernize the way public scarce public resources are allocated. By leaving allocation to the open market rather than the politicians, we might finally bring down the level of corruption in our politics.