Top RP quality award

There are two gentlemen who must be feeling the real spirit of Christmas right now. One is Trade Secretary Peter Favila; the other, respected Filipino sculptor Ramon Orlina.

Some 11 years ago, Orlina designed a magnificent glass trophy that was supposed to be awarded to the Philippine company that would match the global and cutting-edge corporate performance standards of America’s best – the likes of AT & T, Microsoft and the famous Ritz-Carlton chain of luxury hotels, awardees all of the revered United States National Quality Awards named after its champion, former US Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldridge.

That Orlina masterpiece had to gather dust for more than a decade before it was taken out of its casing last Tuesday and handed over to the very first winner of the elusive Philippine counterpart of the Malcolm Baldridge plum, the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) for Performance Excellence.

It went to the all-Filipino - and very Filipino - United Laboratories, Inc. (Unilab).

The Department of Trade has given out PQA’s before. But they were for the lower categories – commitment to, proficiency in, and mastery of quality management. But not the top award for performance excellence which Unilab bagged this year.

And Secretary Favila must be smiling because the achievement of the rare feat by Unilab took place under his watch. Unilab’s achievement of matching the management quality of the US’ elite Malcolm Baldridge club is certainly a boost to Favila’s bid to project the Philippine corporate sector as globally competitive and the country - a good destination for foreign direct investments and an excellent hub for business operations in the Asian region.

American firms know how difficult it is to win the top Malcolm Baldridge plum. The country’s PQA evaluates candidate-firms along the same criteria: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, measurement analysis and knowledge management, human resource focus, process management and business results.

A phalanx of more than a dozen PQA assessors reportedly subjected prospective awardees to some 5,000 man-hours of thorough on-site evaluation – a virtual cruel performance audit of sorts. The litmus test assures US firms that the PQA-awardee Philippine companies adhere to the same principles and practice of the so-called Total Quality Management.

Secretary Favila knows that Unilab’s feat is cause for celebration in the local business sector. The business community had almost given up on the top PQA award which seemed impossible to attain. The DTI chief seems confident that Unilab’s feat would revive the corporate sector’s aspiration to win the coveted top PQA award for Performance Excellence.

Speaking of Unilab, winning the top PQA plum took place some 63 years from the time the late Jose Y. Campos, officially dubbed the Father of the Philippine pharmaceutical industry, opened a small drugstore in Manila and set his “bayanihan”-based business philosophy to work.

We were told that as Unilab garnered top PQA honors, JY Campos’ grandson, Clinton Campos-Hess is set to assume the presidency of the pharmaceutical firm. Clinton is the US-educated son of present Unilab chair Jocelyn Campos-Hess. Current president Carlos Ejercito who has served as Unilab president since 1998, will become vice chair.        

Unilab thus turns a new leaf in its corporate history.

And so does the entire Philippine corporate sector.

Trumped-up charges?

The term bribery can be a bit confusing, especially to non-lawyers.

For a layman, bribery simply means offering money to persuade another person, usually a public officer, to do or not to do an act.

Unfortunately, this is a misconception of what the crime bribery is. The Revised Penal Code is very clear. Bribery, whether direct or indirect, can only be committed by a public officer. The offering a bribe can be charged with corrupting a public official, also a crime, but never bribery.

This basically, is the gist of businessman Francis de Borja’s counter affidavit to a complaint filed against him for “attempting to bribe” CA Justice Jose Sabio P10 million for the latter to withdraw or inhibit as acting chairman of the CA division hearing the Meralco case (questioning the SEC’s restraining order against the holding of the recent Meralco board elections).

Aside from the fact that a private individual cannot commit attempted bribery, De Borja emphasizes that direct and indirect bribery have no attempted or frustrated stage. Hence, either the said offenses are fully and effectively consummated, or no such crimes can be said to have been committed at all. Therefore, the crime of attempted bribery is not only trumped-up, it is also legally non-existent, he said.

He adds in his counter-affidavit that Justice Sabio’s allegations cannot stand the test of reason or even common sense, since the former does not have any interest, whether business or personal, in the Meralco case.

De Borja says Justice Sabio lied when he said that De Borja claimed that Meralco’s Manolo Lopez was waiting in the car on the night of July 1, 2008, since Lopez has travel documents to prove he was not in the country that night,

More importantly, he adds that the supposed attempt to bribe him is not credible because the existence of the supposed bribe money of P10 million was never established. An important piece of evidence that should be presented to prove such fact, or the corpus delicti of the offense itself, is the money or gift itself that was offered or given by the malefactor, De Borja pointed out.

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