MANILA, Philippines - P-Noy can proclaim loudly until he is hoarse and blue in the face how determined he is to go by the Daang Matuwid and a good part of our population will just roll their eyes. At best, some will give him the benefit of the doubt. But even that has an expiry date and that date is fast approaching. As he goes on to his third year on the job, results will start to matter.
If we are talking Daang Matuwid, Customs is the place where P-Noy can show he means business. Last week, Sen. Panfilo Lacson revealed that it is more or less business as usual at Customs with a Friday distribution of forbidden fruits going on as if they have not heard of Daang Matuwid.
Senator Ping was careful to say that the current Customs chief is clean but he also wondered if Ruffy Biazon is being hoodwinked by his people specially because he is new to Customs operations. I was with the CEO of the local Shell subsidiary late last week and he confirmed that oil smuggling is still rampant, as much as 30-40 percent of all imports. This failure of P-Noy’s men to curb smuggling is a factor Shell will consider in making a final decision on future investments here.
Then, there is that brazen attempt to smuggle half a billion pesos worth of Indian rice at Subic. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile was fuming when some of the officials tried to use Subic’s being a free port as reason for the Indian rice being unloaded there.
Rampant smuggling of rice through the years appears to have been tolerated by Customs officials. My colleague Alex Magno noted in his column last week that our official figures put our importation at about 800,000 tons a year. But foreign grains trade monitors put our actual rice importation at about 1.9 million tons annually.
No amount of reorganization or computerization can make honest people out of Customs officials and employees. I doubt if even the fear of God will work. I was going through a coffee table book on the Manila Customs office written by PhilStar ace business reporter Iris Gonzalez with photos taken by Jes Aznar and one could sense how much of a lost cause civilizing the Customs bureau can be.
While the stories about the lower level employees may tug at the heart with all the human pathos of people trying to eke out an existence, you can also sense hardened realism from top to bottom about the nature of their livelihood. Soon enough even those who joined the service with a resolve to keep to a straight and narrow path end up being absorbed by the system. Cleaning up Customs does seem like a hopeless case.
The hopelessness of making honest people out of Customs personnel is not a job for a mild mannered Ruffy Biazon. Cleaning up Customs is a job for someone who is the Filipino equivalent of Superman but one who bites… Ping Lacson.
Senator Lacson is graduating from the Senate in 2013 and there are rumors he will be the next DILG Secretary in a cabinet reshuffle after the elections next May. Compared to the challenge of cleaning up Customs, the DILG post looks like a sissy assignment for Sen. Lacson. Besides, he had been head of the police… he had been there and done that. Dealing with mayors and governors requires a politician not someone like Ping.
Being Customs Commissioner may be a sub-Cabinet position but it is probably the most challenging assignment for Senator Ping. I remember how as PNP Chief, Ping Lacson imposed discipline on the police force. I cannot think of anyone else with the experience and the stomach to do this dirty job of flushing out the scalawags entrenched at the Bureau of Customs.
With Ping working alongside General Danny Lim as his deputy commissioner, there should be exciting times at the waterfront. If this tandem fails, then we can be sure it is an impossible job. Maybe we should just abolish the bureau altogether, disinfect Port Area with Lysol, have it blessed by the Archbishop and declare ourselves a free port. With all the Free Trade Agreements coming into effect, specially the one with ASEAN, Customs will eventually work itself out of a job anyway.
But in the meantime, we need Senator Ping and General Danny to demonstrate how to walk the Daang Matuwid in the most perilous place for corruption. If they can do it at Customs, no Cabinet member can have any excuse not to do it in their area of responsibility.
To keep his credibility, P-Noy must give his personal attention to cleaning up Customs and as the Senate found out last week clean up Subic as well. Fast track the legal process of confiscating that P500 million worth of Indian rice and transfer custody to NFA right away. P-Noy must show in no uncertain terms crime no longer pays under his watch.
If Senator Ping was the Customs Chief now, I am sure a lot of crooks will be running for cover. Parang ang tagal pa ng next year for Senator Ping to start this clean up job. In the meantime, what happens, Mr. President?
Computers
Computers rule our lives these days and for the most part, for the better. But there is a dark side to a dependence on those digital contraptions too. Last week, a glitch in the trading software of Knight Capital caused it to send bogus, rapid-fire trades into the market for 45 minutes and left Knight with big losses on numerous stocks it bought at inflated prices.
According to the Financial Times, traders believe a large order for a number of stocks was executed in five minutes rather than a longer period of up to five days. “The far shorter transaction period pushed prices sharply higher or lower as the scale of the orders overwhelmed the natural liquidity of the market.”
Over the weekend, The Telegraph reports that Knight Capital is fighting for survival after it lost some $440 million. That software glitch wiped out much of its capital.
The speed at which Knight has unraveled, The Telegraph observed, has been particularly unnerving for investors and markets. “It has reignited debate over whether technology has elevated risk in trading to unacceptable levels.”
Not too long ago, there was this embarrassing technology glitch that marred Facebook’s trading debut. Market makers lost over $500 million in the IPO, when many pre-market orders were not confirmed by Nasdaq for several hours after Facebook trading began. It usually takes just milliseconds. UBS said last week that it may take legal action against Nasdaq to recover the more than $350 million it lost in the Facebook IPO.
As if I didn’t get distrustful of computers enough just from reading about these glitches, I caught an episode of Air Crash Investigations on the NatGeo channel and it was about how the auto pilot in a number of air crash cases malfunctioned. By the time the pilots realized what was happening, there was nothing they could do. They could no longer get back control of their aircrafts from the malfunctioning auto pilot.
As anyone who has had problems with the home computer or those who got frustrated with their so called smart phones know, computers are great when they work as programmed. But when computers go berserk at the stock exchange or auto pilots in aircrafts malfunction, the results are deadly.
I guess that’s why I pray before using a computer and as my flights start taking off... and why you should too.
Estate planning
The news last week about Lucio Tan consolidating all his businesses in one holding company has apparently turned out to be more comprehensive than initially reported. It covers not just his local holdings.
Well informed sources told me “Kapitan” will fold in his investments in China and other places as well. The final size of this LT Group Inc. will be $10 billion. The taipan’s businesses would be consolidated under publicly listed Tanduay Holdings Inc. It will eventually be renamed LT Group Inc.
The holding company is now headed by Michael Tan, the taipan’s son from his second family and will likely run the group. He has proven himself responsible and professionally competent and is also at ease working with professionals.
Does this mean there will be no more tax problems? Hopefully, I guess. Lucio Tan has had the most problems with the government among the Chinoy taipans. Maybe his son Michael will break from this controversial past and be more like the Sys, the Gokongweis and the Tys.
Boyfriends
Q: Why is it difficult to find men who are sensitive, caring and good looking?
A: They’ve got boyfriends already.
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco