A happy, hopeful New Year 2009 to one and all!

It’s our first column for the New Year 2009 and if we go by the recent survey coming from the Social Weather Stations (SWS), it shows that nine out of 10 or 92 percent of Filipinos are looking forward to the New Year with hope rather than fear. For starters, I should be doing my traditional New Year’s wish list that I usually do for the first column of the year. But since I consider myself to be part of those nine people who are hopeful this coming year, then let me just say that I do not have the luxury of time to do my personal wishes. I would rather go for the jugular and see if things will move.

If you ask me, the first order of business for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) is to immediately get rid of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman for embarrassing her administration. By now everyone knows that Pangandaman’s son, Nasser Jr., got himself embroiled in a stupid golf spat with Delfin de la Paz when they tried to overtake the latter’s foursome. This ended with a brawl involving the armed bodyguards of Mayor Nasser Pangandaman Jr. of Masiu, Lanao del Sur. Gads! If this mayor beats up people inside a golf course in Metro Manila, it just makes you wonder what he would do in his small town of Masiu!  

I have read the blogs and the various news reports on this issue and I fully agree with our fellow STAR columnist William Esposo of “As I Wreck This Chair” when he wrote “Sec. Pangandaman is entitled to his day in court, but GMA does not have to wait for a court judgment in order to fire him. Sec. Pangandaman is a Cabinet appointee and he serves at GMA’s pleasure. Having just watched the incident and not exercised his official and moral authority are more than enough reasons for the DAR Secretary to be fired.”

With the presidential race heating up in 2009, is this what we can expect from Cabinet secretaries and their equally dangerous children? If you didn’t know, no armed bodyguards are allowed inside the Cebu Country Club (CCC) and surely, many golfers hate those slow players. But since golf is a gentleman’s game; there are certain ethical rules by which golfers are allowed to overtake slow players. But apparently, the Pangandamans have created a new golfing rule by beating up De la Paz and his 14-year-old son! GMA is a golfer and I’m sure she knows these rules. If you ask me, Pangandaman should not be allowed inside any golf course!

However, I must say that GMA ought to sack Secretary Pangandaman not only for the golf course fiasco… but for the corruption that has plagued the DAR, especially in its implementation of the Comprehensive Land Reform Program (CARP) where fixers and insensitive corrupt personnel or Municipal Agrarian Reform Offices (MAROs), in connivance with unscrupulous landowners or corrupt Land Bank officials, have virtually denied legitimate farmers the land they wanted to till or develop.

This was reported to me by Silverio Berenguer, president of the Council of Agricultural Producers and a member of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), during my TV interview with him on how CARP has been so badly implemented from the start. Its objective to give land to the landless has also forced many landowners to join the ranks of the landless! That only means that CARP does not follow the concept of what is fair and equitable. This alone is enough reason why Secretary Pangandaman should be fired! There should be no room for incompetents in the Arroyo Cabinet or any Cabinet for that matter.

The second order of business for the Arroyo administration and the Senate is a full-blown investigation into the closure of eight rural banks belonging to the Legacy Group. These are the Rural Bank of Parañaque, Rural Bank of Bais in Negros Oriental, Pilipino Rural Bank in Cebu, Rural Bank of San Jose, Batangas, Philippine Countryside Bank in Cebu, Dynamic Bank of Calatagan, Batangas, Nation Bank in Bacolod City, and Dynamic Bank also of Calatagan, Batangas.

All these rural banks were placed under receivership by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) from Dec. 9 to 11. Now why did all these rural banks collapsed almost at the same time is something that needs to be fully investigated. While I agree with the statement of the BSP that these rural banks “represent only a tiny fraction of the banking system and that this reaffirms the BSP’s assessment that the banking system remains stable, highly capitalized and highly liquid,” however, these banks just didn’t fold up because of liquidity problems, but because of unsound banking practices.

I would like to believe that this happened because of political patronage, where politicians allow these people to operate rural banks and in the end cause an economic sabotage where poor depositors are left with an empty bag. So let’s have that Senate hearing! 

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.