Sometimes good things do happen

Almost can’t believe it. We made it. We have a new President whose values and unpretentious lifestyle allows him to set the example and makes him someone we can respect. Almost can’t believe she actually left. Indeed, sometimes good things do happen.

Journalists are by nature and training skeptical people who see the glass half empty most of the time. An optimistic journalist is almost an oxymoron or most likely, a PR person. But columnists who are also journalists can also get exhausted and frustrated by all the bad news. Believe it or not, we welcome good things too and we always hope for things to turn out well.

This week has been exceptional, by recent years’ standards. We have a new leadership who is cognizant of the nation’s problems and who looks like he has no other agenda in life but to make a real difference. That we actually managed a peaceful and democratic transition contrary to our worse fears is exhilarating.

Then there the small things that count to common folks. P-Noy promised an end to this nasty feeling of official entitlement symbolized by the “wang wang”. And just before he took his oath, there was this much delayed ruling from the DTI that bans expiry dates in gift certificates.

Getting that ban on expiry dates was one of the small consumer welfare reforms I had been advocating for a while. I first wrote about it when Powerbooks, a subsidiary of National Book Store refused to honor gift certificates I tried to use because expired na daw by a few months.

Last Wednesday, the Philippine Retailers Association took a full page ad assailing the DTI ruling. They claim forgeries will increase without the expiry date. That is bunk. Rustan’s does not have an expiry date for years and if Rustan’s can do it, so can everyone else. It is just a matter of having the right system.

The more important consideration is that the gift certificates had been paid for, the retailers had use of the cash for some time and they must, in exchange, deliver value in terms of goods or services. To just declare those gift certificates expired is like taking money for nothing. That sounds like stealing.

The other great news I learned about this week is the modernization of the passport issuing system at the DFA. I dropped by the DFA last Monday to congratulate Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo. It so happened, Ambassador Domingo Lucenario Jr., currently our envoy to Nairobi was around. As it turned out, he was the one in charge of the modernization project when I last wrote about it March 16, 2007.

Ambassador Lucenario said that he clipped my column and pasted it on his wall. He said he used that column to remind him daily of his unfinished mission. In a way, he said, seeing it on his wall gave him inspiration to make sure the modernization program happens as soon as possible.

Secretary Romulo told me the same thing when I bumped into him during the opening of the exhibit of noted artist Juvenal Sanso some months ago. Tito Bert reminded me of that column and told me that the challenge I had hurled in 2007 had been met and accomplished. He said he took that column not as a criticism but more of a positive reminder of what he had to deliver to the Filipino people.

Indeed, it was quite an accomplishment. It was crunch time when I wrote that column. DFA was running out of passport books to issue and a TRO was issued by a Pasig regional trial court preventing the DFA and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) from producing the new type of passport that is required in our post 9/11 world.

As I pointed out in that column, luckily, the Supreme Court acted positively on an urgent motion filed by DFA to allow it to proceed with the production of the new e-passports. The e-passport project upgrades the current passport to one that is biometric and interoperable with systems in immigration ports of entry throughout the world. The DFA issues some 7,500 passports a day or some two million a year.

If the Supreme Court didn’t act quickly, Pinoys who do not already have the old type of passport can no longer travel abroad for want of a travel document. We will lose a good part of our OFW market in the process. Imagine the social unrest from thousands of jobless Pinoys who can’t even take the option of working abroad. Three thousand of them leave daily for jobs abroad.

Worse, by 2010 or this year, even the old green passport will no longer be acknowledged as a travel document because it falls short of the International Civil Aviation Organization specifications. DFA made representations for extended validity for the green passport but its holders are subject to more scrutiny at ports of entry.

I pointed out in that 2007 column that the delay in the e-passport project was clearly a failure of the DFA leadership and bureaucracy. The project was proposed to FVR by another Romulo, then Foreign Secretary Bobby Romulo. When they finally signed a contract, the winning bidder slept on the project for over five years until Secretary Bert Romulo acted. Worse, that contract’s specifications, which use bar codes, had been overtaken by new technology.

Foreign Secretary Bert Romulo should be lauded for acting decisively by voiding the contract. He then worked out a new project with the Bangko Sentral that adopted the latest technology and made our passports in line with international post 9/11 regulations. Who could best provide DFA with security printing services than the BSP, the agency that runs a security printing plant for our currency?

Then there was a need for a decent building to house the new facility and give passport applicants comfortable and respectable service. Secretary Romulo asked the Development Bank of the Philippines to enter into a kind of a BOT scheme that made it possible for the DFA to have this brand new building that looks so unlike a typical government office.

This new service now makes us among the nations that now use machine readable passports. Pinoys will no longer experience long embarrassing moments at immigration counters while immigration officers figure out if our travel document is tampered or not. Secretary Romulo showed how to do the right thing within the limitations of our bureaucratic rules and legal system. He refused to let our people be hostage to the system.

As I look at the thousands of people trying to get passports in that new air conditioned office where an orderly system is in force, I could see the change in the mission of the foreign office. Foreign Service Officers, the best trained and the elite in our bureaucracy must now be concerned not just with the glamorous job of international diplomacy, but with the welfare of our OFWs.

Taking care of fellow citizens abroad is now more important than drinking cocktails in endless diplomatic parties. I also like Secretary Bert Romulo’s initiative of creating regional offices all over the country so people don’t have to go to Manila for a passport. A remote office at POEA also provides passport services to OFWs and their families.

There are still kinks in the current system, one that needs the help of the police and the NBI. Some enterprising people are selling appointment dates that go for free and in the process crowding out legitimate applicants. But that can be more easily addressed by following the system of the US and European embassies in issuing visas.

What is important is that we now have a world-class passport system. Secretary Bert Romulo and Ambassador Lucenario should be commended for getting that done. Secretary Romulo is among that rare breed of public servants with management skills and political sense. Ambassador Jaime Victor Ledda, who now heads Consular Services, now has the task of making the system work as well as it should… for the good of our people.

All the good news this week feels just great for a columnist who sometimes feels like a broken record writing about needed reforms. It is good to know that once in a while, something good happens in response to the matters brought up in this space.

Now, I wonder if my good friend, newly minted DOTC Secretary Ping de Jesus can do something about those faulty radars at NAIA. We cannot be diverting 20 or so flights elsewhere every day during the rainy season because of poor visibility.

Little people

I got this text message from Rosan Cruz soon after Noynoy concluded his inaugural speech.

Noynoy showed his concern for little people by fetching Gloria first and then sitting beside Binay.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]