Secretary Raul S. Roco : Guru Of The Guro

Everyone wants a piece of Raul S. Roco.

Textbook suppliers, those smug veterans of creative lobbying, want a fatal chunk of his integrity. They have moved with alacrity to test the resolve of the new Education Secretary, delivering innuendoes as cagily as the Cheshire Cat. These are nervous times for them; they are acutely aware that the past practice of opaque bids is in grave peril.

Public schoolteachers, so long without a forceful advocate, also ache for his time. It is not unusual for them to send him text messages, abbreviated versions of their continuing woes. The whipping boy stoop that has often marked their carriage is slowly being replaced by a more assured bearing, the result of having a secretary they feel has already improved their lot in four short months.

Private schoolteachers want in on the action too. If Roco will not shower them with the same benefits that have drenched their public school counterparts, then they threaten an unheard of mass exodus to the once ridiculed other side–the definitive tribute to the secretary’s accomplishments.

Korina Sanchez, if we interpret her recent on-air vitriol as more than just normal petulance, wants Roco’s reputation carved up into bloody strips. Backed by an indulgent network, the broadcasting diva feels she has been slighted and will not be mollified. She continues to spoil for a fight; the Education Secretary, however, has casually moved on.

But it is a Sunday, and those who want a piece of Raul Roco today have no hidden agenda. His grandchildren certainly desire only his company. They tug at his leg, hug his arm and happily snuggle up to him, convinced their grandpa would do anything for them. Roco readily obliges by playing the doting lolo–"hello, sweetheart", "this is my beautiful apo", "yes, you may go for a swim later". His grandchildren though have a furious competitor for his affection, the seven-month-old labrador retriever Itim, offspring of equally itim Sandra, named after the actress.

The gifted puppy upstages even the politician known for his sense of theater, singing in a wobbly tenor as soon as Roco’s lovely wife Sonia plays a few bars on the piano. (She claims Itim’s crooning skills surfaced only after her husband had left the Senate.) Adding to his growing legend, birds have been seen piggy-backing on him just like in the Disney movies. Says Roco, "Ka-birthday niya si Sen. Drilon. I nearly called him Franklin but he’s my friend at baka magalit siya." Itim is Roco’s trimmer shadow and an invisible leash seems to connect the two; the devotion of dog to master is rather touching. Roco jokes, "Ang mabuti sa aso ay talagang tuta."

Roco is looking relaxed in his garden, his tailored and outrageously upbeat floral shirt splashing the greenery with color. He is a far cry from the tense senator who repeatedly locked horns with belligerent pro-Estrada senators during the impeachment trial. Roco brilliantly encapsulated our indignation after Atty. Sigfried Fortun, having watched one too many L.A. Law episodes in his youth, "foisted" the Delia Rajas cheap shot on the court. It was the perfect word for the charade, one that was repeated on the lips of senators, media personalities and the general public for days. And who can forget the quivering, incensed Sen. Roco pointing an accusing finger at a visibly shaken Atty. Raul Daza, roaring, "You are out of order! You are out of order!"

"I thought we would win. I think that is why when the ‘no’ votes won, there was a break of trust. Personally, it was heartrending. I just went to EDSA almost automatically," he says of the non-opening of the second envelope.

Comparing the Senate to his current post, Roco explains, "The Senate is different because it’s collegial and you’re not responsible for your opinions. You can really be totally unaccountable because until something is voted on and becomes a collegial opinion it has no consequence to anyone except to you and those who believe your opinions."

Upon assuming the position of Education Secretary last February, Roco faced a Department of Education, Culture and Sports (decs) that was asphyxiated by red tape and corruption, sinking ever deeper into quicksand that previous administrations neither had the will nor the energy to pull it out of. "Everyone has been making the decs, the students and the teachers a captive market. Everyone was using it as an enterprise. In the Bible, the Lord gets angry only once, when the temple was made into a market," he says.

So Roco pulled out his whip and, with swift and decisive strokes, lashed out at the sources of the department’s ineptitude. He badgered Finance Secretary Alberto Romulo into applying a tax amnesty for public schoolteachers, which exempted them from having to remit their withholding taxes for one-and-a-half months. He initiated a loan-restructuring program, reversing the department’s policy of playing collector for private lending firms and reviewing the records of an astonishing 187 lending and insurance institutions that serviced the country’s 500,000 public schoolteachers. He convinced the Government Service Insurance System to buy out P5 billion worth of teachers’ loans from 50 private lending and insurance firms, enabling the persistently indebted teachers to repay their loans at a significantly lower interest rate.

"We are playing hardball for the teachers. They are my constituency now. You see, I am too much of a lawyer. I have one client–the teachers and the students. And I will get every single benefit for my client," he says, eyes narrowing and head tilting–the trademark Roco demeanor that forewarns he means business.

Enforcing transparent bidding, Roco has nearly halved the unit price of textbooks, hopefully burying once and for all textbook scandals of the past. He also reminded the country of a novel idea–public education is supposed to be free.

"I brought simplicity to decs. You see people think that if something is very complex, then it works. I believe simple solutions are the ones that really work. The Constitution says: free compulsory elementary education! Everywhere I went, the parents were getting ready for matrikula. There is I.D of P15, miscellaneous of P50, Red Cross of P30–it’s in the manual, I saw it! They were all optional and voluntary daw. There was anti-TB, Boy Scout and Girl Scout. It amounted, depending on the school, to anywhere from P400 to P1,400. Yun pala ang matrikula–yung mga voluntary contributions. So I met all the regional directors, how can we correct this so-called matrikula? I issued an order–free education, not one peso. It’s really very simple. Some principals collect from parents to pay the janitor and electricity daw. But the janitor and electricity are supposed to be in your budget, I tell them."

If it all seems so easy and straightforward, it wasn’t. "In the first two weeks, people were trying to trip me up. But after all, you don’t survive on politics," Roco says, head cocked and eyes steely as a warning once again. "On the second week, somebody gave a stop order on operational checks kasi ayaw ko raw ng mga utang. It was sabotage."

Success appears to be second nature to Roco. The son of a farmer and a public school teacher from Bicol, he finished elementary at ten and high school at 14 in Ateneo de Naga. He graduated AB English, magna cum laude, at 18, and earned his law degree as Abbot’s Awardee for Over-all Excellence at San Beda College, then took his Master of Comparative Law as a University Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Roco was the youngest president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. As legal staff of Sen. Ninoy Aquino, the wonderboy drafted the Study Now Pay Later Law.

Roco also possesses a softer side devoid of the notoriously competitive streak, dabbling in pursuits that make him a sort of Renaissance Man of politics. He is a songwriter, tinkles the ivory and even plays a bit of violin. And he writes poetry: "I have always wanted to become a writer. I write poems but I hardly ever wrote love poems. I wrote of freedom; I wrote of the birds in the cage. When my professors in college would assign us to write poetry, everyone else would write about love and I would write about something else. I remember I wrote a poem about the rice mill and how it transforms gold into silver–the golden grains become silver. It’s a way of seeing things in a way others might not, I think that’s the gift of the writer."

The Roco garden is conducive to such lofty thoughts populated as it is with lanzones, ilang-ilang, manggustin, rambutan, durian, sampaloc, duhat, sampaguita, molave and many other trees and flowering plants. The farmer’s son must have inherited a green thumb, you would assume. "I have a good gardener," he smiles.

The wonderful garden is also a setting that displays what is among Roco’s most effective attributes–the ability to crank up the charm or wield the big stick, intrinsically recognizing which approach will bear the most fruit. To a lanzones tree that seemed trapped in a growth rut, he was effusive and kindly, speaking to it in sing-song Bicolano. The tree developed rapidly, outpacing its friends who were deprived of the renowned Roco charisma. To a yellow blossom that for two years had rebuffed all efforts to make it bloom, Roco employed a terser, more menacing method (his staff is said to be familiar with this one). "I’m giving you until May or I’ll cut you off," he snarled. The yellow blossom, of course, flowered soon enough.

Raul Roco talks about retiring to his farm in Antipolo after straightening out the mess at decs. In three years time, the latest Education Secretary may very possibly lay claim to disentangling his department from what has for decades been perceived as an inextricable knot of problems. To rebuild an educational system previously in tatters would be a historic achievement–millions of teachers, students and parents could be sufficiently grateful to give the secretary another shot at redemption after being rolled over by the Estrada juggernaut in the 1998 presidential elections. Roco’s early retirement to the farm may just have to wait.