STALEMATED. THAT’S the top leadership at the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority when the newly appointed administrator pulled out even before he appeared.
Rafael Reyes, named SBMA administrator by President Aquino on April 7 to replace Armand Arreza, is reported in the papers as having “backed out … resigned.”
All that was quoted of Reyes by the Inquirer was this text: “I don’t wish to comment on government matters while I’m still a private citizen.”
So what gives?
A source of the paper speculated that Reyes “got scared of the worsening financial problems of the SBMA.”
He furthered: “(Reyes) did not expect that the problems would include not only non-corporate matters but political ones, too. It only proves that the one heading the SBMA should not just be a technocrat but should also have some political savvy, one who knows the political terrain.”
Out of the usual is Reyes’ apparent lack of interest, if not misgiving, over a most coveted post. Whatever his reasons, he has my admiration. For it takes a real man to reject something other men would be more than willing to storm the very heavens for.
This reminds me of a media colleague who found himself in similar, albeit lesser, situation. Here’s Zona Libre in The Voice, May 12-18, 2002, titled Dignity becomes Ding.
PRIZED plum is a directorship at the Clark Development Corp.: twenty grand plus per board meeting, perks and privileges capped by a villa at Redwood and a brand new Toyota Corolla Altis, travel, elbow-rubbing and champagne glass-clinking with the high and mighty, periodic tete-a-tete with the President of the Philippines, among others.
Just about everybody hereabouts with a congressman for an uncle, or a presidential relative for a friend, or an influence-peddler for a lover dreams, kowtows, worms, even claws his/her way to the charmed circle that is the CDC Board.
Once in, just about everybody does everything and anything: cries “Uncle!,” lickspittles, starts LQs – that’s lovers’ quarrel, dummy, to hold on, nay, glue on his director’s chair. No matter his incompetence. No matter her idiocy.
Not just about everybody is Diosdado Cabrera Cervantes, Jr. A class act, if I see one. As a writer. A rara avis, if I find one. As a government-owned corporation director-designate.
Ensconced in his niche as a journalist of prominence – if I must choose the top three contemporary writers in Central Luzon, Ding will most assuredly be one of them – the CDC directorship not once figured in Ding’s prolific imagination. Focused as he is in the day-to-day chronicling of events in Pampanga for the Philippine Star.
It was the CDC directorship that sought – and found – him.
So we learned from “way up” sources that it was Her Excellency herself that inked Ding’s appointment. More significantly, it was Her Excellency herself that recommended Ding to be appointed.
A clear way off the oft-beaten directorship track whereby some other people or groups lobby for Her Excellency’s imprimatur.
At times – many times – so it is said, nominees even dispose of every shred of modesty to craft recommendation letters for themselves and beg some other people to sign them.
Nominees even resort to weaving fibs and fables around them or re-invent themselves outright to gloss over inherent defects in character, so it is also said.
Being Ding. That was all it took for him to land a CDC directorship.
Being Ding. That was all it took for him to decline a CDC directorship.
“Some are attracted by money. Others are attracted by meaning. Meaning in their lives over money in their lives.” So opted Ding. Even as he thanked Her Excellency for the signal honor of a CDC directorship.
The vocation of writing rises to the fore here. Of inherence in and adherence to the journalism, at its purest. Whatever the cost, however much the price, whatsoever the prize.
By declining the CDC directorship – and foregoing the laterial perks and privileges attendant thereto – Ding has humbled us all. The CDC director – with the realization that there is more to his corporate life than Redwood villas and Altis cars. The journalist – with the wake-up call to redeem journalistic honor long pawned to materialism, if not yet fully purchased by it.
By declining the CDC directorship, dignity becomes Ding. We in media are all honoured here.
WHICH brings us to the current of events at the CDC.
A supposition: there’s a Freeport in Dumaguete City, and the President appoints a Kapampangan as its president-chief executive officer. How do you suppose the people of that city – its political and corporate leadership principally – will react?
So is there no Kapampangan capable enough to head CDC that P-Noy had to import Atty. Felipe Antonio B. Remollo, former mayor of Dumaguete and a Liberal Party member?
If being an ex-mayor and LP member were P-Noy’s prime factors for consideration in the selection of the CDC top honcho, then he could not have looked farther than the CDC Board itself.
Max Sangil, member of that board for a number of years, fits the bill and more: former mayor – as a matter of fact, the millennium mayor – of Angeles City and an LP member. I am most certain though that my compadre is too dignified to accept the post if previous elective post and party affiliation were the only criteria for selection.
Still, P-Noy’s imposition of an “alien” at the CDC impacts on the sensitivity of the Kapampangan.
