Complete staff work, not ‘stuffed’ work

The recent appointment of Customs Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio has started to kick up a stink due to the fact that a comparatively lower-ranked officer who was personally tagged by former senator Panfilo Lacson as one of the bagmen or collector of TARA (tong) has made it to the highest and most sensitive position at the Bureau of Customs.

The appointment has reached controversial proportions as different factions and events have converged all the way to Malacañang. My sources at the BOC say that the former OIC Commissioner Yogi Ruiz was worked over or “tinarabaho” by two BOC officials identified with Rubio. The operations allegedly started when Ruiz and his people came into conflict with untouchable Chinese/Filipino smugglers of agricultural products and even dragging into the fray the First Lady’s brother, Martin Araneta.

The operators saw their opportunity to demolish Ruiz and took the issue to both mainstream and social media and skewed the scenario to intentionally involve the First Lady, with the plan of getting Ruiz fired as BOC chief. Sources claim that Ruiz was no saint either, so no one was about to come to his defense outside the BOC walls.

Another source informed me that the Rubio group had the blessings of a very powerful congressman who stoked other congressmen to conduct an investigation of Ruiz to complete the picture that Ruiz had to go.

The final stroke allegedly happened when President Bongbong Marcos was in Tokyo and was very happy with his engagements with Japanese officials and businessmen and was slipped the recommendation for Rubio as BOC chief in spite of being a junior official with issues. Rubio’s endorsement was allegedly “stuffed” and not based on “complete staff work.” Rubio was presented as an Ilocano and a townmate of PBBM and comes with the endorsement of powerful congressmen and leaders of a religious sect.

From the looks of it, the President was told by his Reckless Whisperer that Ruiz had to be removed and replaced by Rubio immediately before more controversies crop up and drag down the family and his administration. It remains to be seen if Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and his staff signed off on the endorsement or was given the chance to do complete staff work.

Last I heard, President BBM was infuriated to find out about the Lacson privilege speech and the realization that he had been “blindsided” and fooled into appointing someone with very serious baggage. And there is more. In my previous column, I stated that the evil forces at the BOC were celebrating the change of leadership.

Apparently, smugglers did not wait for formalities to take place as hundreds of containers of sugar were immediately brought in and driven off, while a ship-load of smuggled oil/fuel arrived, as if just waiting for the green light on smuggling to be turned on. All this taking place within 24/48 hours of the change in Commissioner.

Yes, talk at the piers is it is now open season as long as you pay the required TARA or slice of P10,000 per container so that you can have your legitimate importations processed as fast as a hamburger drive thru. And if you want to smuggle unacceptable products or pay much less than duties and taxes required, please prepare P100,000.

In the last two days, I have interviewed columnists, namely Nonoy Oplas of BusinessWorld and Jarius Bondoc of The Philippine STAR, on our show AGENDA on Cignal TV. Both have said that the Bureau of Customs can easily cover the annual budgetary requirements of the Philippine government if collections were done right. Jarius Bondoc pointed out that if the government were the one to collect the P100,000 bribes for smuggling per container and converted it into a fixed rate, fastlane charge, the BOC could easily fund government. Instead, a handful of dirty rotten officials and their morally bankrupt backers are the ones raking in the money.

So, what can be done or what can we expect, given the fact that the controversial appointment of Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio has become so publicized? Can we expect President Bongbong Marcos to withdraw Rubio’s appointment? Jarius Bondoc was surprisingly optimistic about such a possibility. He reminded me and the viewers of AGENDA how PBBM had earlier reprimanded the SRA chief and DA undersecretary Leocadio Sebastian about an import order for sugar.

Sebastian submitted his resignation to PBBM but by then the President had probably been informed that Usec. Sebastian was innocent of any wrongdoing and had proactively moved in good faith. The President subsequently assigned Usec. Sebastian to another position.

On the other hand, there have been appointees who had political or PR baggage who were quietly asked to resign or simply told to withdraw. No fireworks, no big production, just moving along.

As Jarius Bondoc pointed out, President Bongbong Marcos is clearly not above correcting mistakes. He won’t issue apologies, he won’t give justifications, he simply fixes the problem. This is a character and behavior of the President that should be highlighted for everyone and not just us in the media because it sends out a message to those in government, in business and in the public sector that we are all human, mistakes can and are made but they can also be corrected.

Last piece of advice that Jarius had to offer was for PBBM to consider adopting the style of his late uncle and former president Fidel Valdez Ramos to firmly put in place a policy and pre-requisite of complete staff work for all endorsements, recommendations, policies and appointments, among others. Complete staff work will guide leaders on the correctness, accuracy and integrity of a given matter and protect him from “stuffed work.” It also gives the President documentary proof for approval or denial of recommendations coming from the “We Bulong” people around him.

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