Part 3 of a Series: Is it worth saving an incompetent and corrupt President?

The nation suffered a great loss when Emilia Tabalanza Boncodin died at only age 55.

Who was she, and how did she acquire the respect and admiration of our country’s leaders even at a young age?

Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, who was still running for the presidency, visited her wake and said Boncodin was his choice to head the Department of Budget and Management if he wins in the May elections. “Napakabata pa kung tutuusin. Marami pa sana siyang itutulong. Sa totoo lang po kung tayo papalarin iniisip ko siya ibalik sa DBM (She is still young and could help government a lot. I was thinking of making her Budget Secretary should I win the presidential elections).

“Isang tapat na lingkod-bayan na naninindigan sa katotohanan. Yan ang dapat maalala natin, na namumuhay sa simpleng pamumuhay (She was a dedicated public servant who stood by the truth. That is what we should remember, and that she lived a simple life),” said former Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman.

But we are going ahead of our story.

Boncodin practically spent her entire career in the Department of Budget and Management joining it in 1978 as a senior fiscal planning specialist, quickly rising to become division chief at the age of 27, fast-tracking to become Director of the Office of Budget and Management. When the Office was elevated to become a Department, she served as Officer-in-Charge of the Government Corporations Budget Bureau.

In 1989, she was appointed as an assistant secretary. Two years after, she was promoted to undersecretary. In 1998, Upon the recommendation of Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo, she was promoted to the Cabinet of Fidel Ramos, at age 44 as DBM Secretary, but served only from February until June 1998.

When Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took over the unfinished term of Joseph Estrada, as president she recalled her in 2001 to join her Cabinet, at age 47 again as DBM Secretary.

Personal anecdote

In 2004, while serving as lead consultant to Agriculture Secretary Luisito Lorenzo I started having interactions with the DBM.

On his 40^th day in office, Lorenzo observed that the volume of fund allocation requests he has been sending to the DBM do not tally the releases passing his office. So, he told me to see Secretary Boncodin and investigate what was happening.

She explained that the discrepancy in the figures was due to the fact that DBM has been releasing funds to the agriculture department observing a Memorandum authorized by Lorenzo’s predecessor, directly to its regional directors at a certain level, to our Finance Undersecretary Jocjoc Bolante at a higher level, and to the Secretary at the highest level.

This did not settle well with Lorenzo, whose department got only 3.99% of the total annual budget, or P32.9 billion, the lion’s share of which were already earmarked for payroll and administrative expenses, and maintenance of pre-existing project expenses only of the vast bureaucracy in the department, leaving only about a balance of only 700 million for development programs.

Lorenzo immediately complained to President Arroyo about this practice, arguing that the intended a strict fiscal control of the agency in order to generate savings that augment the road maps he intended for a robust agriculture and fisheries industry.

Arroyo disapproved his request with the usual profane diatribe that accompanies her speech whenever she wants to drown the logic of a proponent.

So, if we could not micromanage our own appropriations when they appear in the pipeline,  we were left with no choice but to work very closely with Secretary Boncodin so we could  judiciously generate savings as early as before requesting for Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) which serves as the primary authority for an agency to incur obligations or spend funds and the Notice of Cash Allocation (NCA) which is the authorization to spend the actual cash from the Bureau of the Treasury. 

Limited control is better than no control whatsoever. Before requesting for SARO, we pre-audited the programmed expenditures in search for savings and whatever differential we can generate.

Lorenzo was secretary for only 20 months, but assisted by Chinese technology developed by Yuan Longpin for hybrid varieties, we achieved 97% rice sufficiency for human consumption and 83% corn sufficiency for livestock feed. We launched the Nautical Highway west of Luzon by expanding the Roll-on Roll Off (RORO) from Batangas to Calapan, and from Roxas, Oriental Mindoro to Caticlan, Aklan. We introduce the Get-Excel Tilapia producing palm size four times a year, beating Costa Rica’s three times a year, and establishing 14 hatcheries all over the Philippines in just six months.

On top of this, to inspire private sector support, we organized a “Whistle Blowers Bureau”, outside of the department, to monitor corruption, smuggling, hoarding and other agriculture and fisheries related crimes. Our goal was to telegraph to investors to put their money in the food industry but while achieving that especially in the fruit and vegetable sectors where we had geometric growth in exports, we accidentally opened as pandora’s box.

With the cooperation of the Bureau of Customs, we seized PhP5.87 billion worth of smuggled agricultural products into the Philippines.

But with Boncodin’s expert sleuthing, we found that a great amount of those whose budget allocations were released through signatures of the undersecretaries and the regional directors were bid anomalously – 728-million peso scams involving Janet Napoles and another one at 423-million involving the National Food Authority, on fertilizer ghost deliveries; the fake Hog Dispersal Program, overpriced BFAR patrol boats, among others.

But despite our achievements were near to miraculous achievements in just 20 months, using supply-chain economy as rule of thumb, because of command responsibility, Lorenzo was dragged into about 20 graft and corruption suits he had no participation in, that took him the next 20 years to clear his name.

Hyatt 10

A great portion of the monies illegally raised from those scams through the connivance of Jocjoc Bolante, DA undersecretary for finance and Mike Arroyo, the first gentleman, helped Gloria Arroyo gain an edge in the 2004 presidential elections.

Armed with a treasure chest, the resounding issues of corruption could not stop her winning over Fernando Poe Jr., but providence has its way of manifesting a “karma”.

During the first year of her regular six-year presidency, audio recordings of a phone call conversation between President Arroyo and then-Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, allegedly talking about the rigging of the 2004 national election results, were released to the public.

Popularly known as the “Hello-Garci” scandal, a group of seven of her Cabinet secretaries of and three heads of government agencies, held a press conference at Hyatt Regency Hotel announcing their resignations on July 8, 2005.

Emily Boncodin was one of the “Hyatt 10”.

A native of Iriga City, Boncodin was a topnotch student since her elementary days as valedictorian of Iriga Central Pilot School and valedictorian of St. Anthony College, also in Iriga City.

She was a government scholar at the UP where she completed her BS in Business Administration & Accountancy in 1975.

“After my graduation, I joined the Philippine Cotton Corporation. Back then, if you are a government scholar you have to sign a contract that basically says you have to work for the government for three years,” she shared.

Boncodin placed 15th in the CPA Board Examinations that same year, out of 8,000 examinees.

“Following that the UP Dean of the College of Business, Mr. Jaime Laya, became the Budget Commissioner. He was restructuring the DBM and was recruiting young graduates. I was one of them,” she added.

Among the awards and citations she received in the DBM were Most Outstanding Technical Employee in 1978, and Most Outstanding Division Chief in 1981.

In 1986, she finished her Masters in Public Administration at Harvard University in Cambridge where she was a beneficiary of the Edward S. Mason Program, Harvard’s oldest international program, designed for experienced public leaders from transitional or developing countries to gain skills to drive growth, democracy, or equality. 

On the side, she was a professorial lecturer at the Lyceum of the Philippines and the University of the Philippines in its National College of Public Administration and Governance teaching courses in budgeting and accounting. “I would teach on Saturdays just because I like to teach.”

She was also the Outstanding Alumna of the UP College of Business Administration in 1992, and an Outstanding Women in Nation’s Service Awardee in 1995. Finally in 1996 she was named the Dwight Eisenhower Fellow for the Philippines.

Wisdom from the Lady

The Philippine Star ran a 2001 interview of Boncodin quoting the World Bank that the Philippine government is losing up to P20 billion to corruption every year, not including commissions and kickbacks from state infrastructure contracts. She said, “so what do we do? We cannot go on being disappointed or else you would be doing a disservice to your cause and your post. You try instead to look for ways to eliminate this, or at least minimize it.”

The model budget chief pointed out that procurement is one area where a lot of the leakages happen. She cited that in the education department alone, when they reformed their procurement system, they generated savings of up to 28 percent.

“They didn’t have to ask for more money to buy more books and more chairs. The most important thing for me is to make procurement very transparent, then people will be more afraid to go against the rules.” she said.

What about defending the budget in a cantankerous Congress? She said “it’s a different battle. It is not difficult if you are convinced of the budget you are defending in the first place. If it is something you are not convinced about, you will be telling lies and you will be caught.

“Since they are representatives of the people, I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I cannot say that my budget is better than Congress’–that is too presumptuous on my part. I will disagree with some of the changes that are made but, at the end of the day, it is the budget that is passed that I will implement.”

Boncodin is regularly faced with intense lobbying from rather imaginative politicians; once she was asked to dip into the Calamity Fund when there was no calamity: “I said that if you could treat it as a calamity then why not? But by no stretch of the imagination can I make it look like a calamity.”

So how did she navigate attempts at corrupt practices?

“My role, essentially, is to be consistent with what I say to one and then to another. For me, that is the best way to deal with congressmen. If you tell one something and another the same thing, then it doesn’t bother you anymore. It’s the minute you start making exceptions that you become very vulnerable. The exceptions become the rule.”

Former Senate President Franklin Drilon tells of a no-nonsense Boncodin. “She had her way of saying no without displeasing people. She was very frank when she sees that there are certain items where she has to stand her ground.”

Blogger Dingg458 commented “Emilia ‘Emmie’ Boncodin must have felt out of place when she was in Arroyo’s cabinet. Now she is gone.

“But she stands heads and shoulders over those who find nothing wrong with raiding the public coffers and living in stolen wealth while Filipinos are continually devalued by grinding poverty and immorality in public life.”

To be continued.

Part 4: A government without CCTV Cameras

 

Postscript on Karma

Karma is the ancient Indian concept of a universal moral law of cause and effect, where individuals’ actions and intentions influence their future experiences. Good deeds and intentions lead to good karma and happier circumstances, while negative ones result in bad karma and less favorable future conditions. It can also refer to a force that affects someone’s life, sometimes explained by the adage “what goes around comes around”

More than three years ago, tapes ostensibly containing a wiretapped conversation purportedly between the President of the Philippines and a high-ranking official of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) surfaced.

The tapes, notoriously referred to as the “Hello Garci” tapes, allegedly contained the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s instructions to Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano to manipulate in her favor results of the 2004 presidential elections. They captured unprecedented public attention and thrust the country into a controversy that placed the legitimacy of the present administration on the line, and resulted in the near-collapse of the Arroyo government.

As a result of the Hello Garci scandal, 10 key officials of the Arroyo government resigned their posts on July 8, 2005, announcing their indignation in a press conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, hence the moniker “Hyatt 10”.

They were Corazon Dinky Soliman, Emilia Boncodin , Florencio Abad, Cesar Purisima, Rene Revilla, Juan Santos, Imelda Nicolas, Guillermo Parayno, Alberto Lina and Teresita Deles.

More than 200 other government officials filed or signed impeachment complaints against Arroyo.

To calm the situation and appease the general public, Arroyo issued her infamous “I am sorry” on live television. She, however, no longer recovered public acceptance ranking worst in Philippine presidential history in terms of approval and trust ratings.