‘Dakota wisdom’ escapes gov’t

Tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best option is to dismount. In government, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies have evolved and are often employed.

These include: (1) change riders, (2) buy a stronger whip, (3) do nothing ("This is the way we have always ridden dead horses"), (4) visit other countries to see how they ride dead horses, (5) run a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse’s performance, (6) hire a contractor/consultant to ride the dead horse, (7) provide more funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance, (8) harness several dead horses together in an attempt to increase the speed, (9) appoint a committee to study the horse and assess how dead it actually is, (10) reclassify the dead horse as "living impaired", (11) develop a Strategic Plan for the management of dead horses, (12) rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses, (13) modify existing standards to include dead horses, (14) declare that, as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than many other horses, (15) promote the dead horse to supervisor (although competition for such position is fierce).

It’s exasperating, watching government react to situations. In the face of rising crude prices over which RP has no control, it ignores the obvious tack of teaching jeepney drivers and commuters to change riding habits, and instead designates pumps for discounted diesel in selected gas stations. Even that it does with patent favoritism, to the detriment of other station owners in the locale. Meanwhile, waiting to be tapped for bio-diesel are hundreds of millions of coconut trees. Meanwhile, too, other obvious ways to cut fuel use, like better traffic routing or carpooling, are on hold.

In the midst of a bird flu scare, national officials are running around in circles. The health secretary exacerbated panic by saying a pandemic "is just a matter of time." A senator is proposing a Malacañang-Congress task force to prevent the H5N1 virus from entering RP from neighboring lands; another is volunteering a colleague (an ex-health secretary) as anti-avian influenza czar. Yet all they have to do is ask the Bureau of Animal Industry and the National Epidemiology Center for inputs. The BAI months ago already had drawn up plans for bird flu prevention, detection and suppression – just that the national officials were busy politicking to notice. Among these are a ban on exotic bird and poultry imports (live or cooked), stockpiling of animal vaccines, ban on duck-raising in marshlands where migratory birds roost from Oct. to Feb., and setting up of hotlines for swift verification and containment of outbreaks. The NEC, the same agency that saved RP from last year’s SARS, also already has designated hospitals for human infections, trained personnel on how to care for potential patients, and stockpiled drugs for H5N1 cure. Many local governments have banned hunting of migratory birds, knowing that humans can catch the flu from bird sneezes and feces. All the BAI, NEC and alert mayors need from national officials is help in info dissemination, not any highfalutin program.

Then, there’s the protracted negotiation with Piatco to open Manila International Airport’s Terminal-3. Why is government talking with Piatco at all? Has not the Supreme Court declared the firm’s build-operate-transfer contract void ab initio? That means Piatco has no contract to negotiate with the government. All the latter has to do is await the ruling of arbitration bodies in Singapore and Washington on how much to compensate Piatco, if any, for its 96-percent finished terminal. Meanwhile, it has possession of the terminal by virtue of expropriation. Government thus has two options: run the terminal on its own or, since it has no cash to finish the 4 percent, award the deal to the original bidder that Piatco beat by deceit in 1996.

There’s also too much speculation about the famously missing Garci. One congressman says he could be dead, silenced probably by partners in election crime, when it is so easy to check if his family in Cagayan de Oro is in mourning or relaxing. The Opposition too has been howling that the Administration is not looking for the man in Singapore or Sabah or London or Jersey or any of the Latin American countries where he reportedly has been sighted on same days. If it truly wants truth and justice – and people are waiting – why has it not filed a criminal case against Garci that would lead to the issuance of a warrant of arrest, to be submitted to the Interpol? That’d put him on the world manhunt list. Same with that Jocjoc Bolante of the infamous farm fertilizer releases to city congressmen and bogus NGOs. Charge him to make the manhunt official, then get him.

And what’s all this loud wails of central officials that the anniversary of last year’s deadly mudslides in Quezon is fast approaching, and yet no measures have been laid down to avert a recurrence? Has not the town of Mauban been pinpointed as the province’s new center of illegal log trading? That the area has many rivers through which hot logs are transported to sea is no excuse for inaction. Dispatch the forest guards, police, Army, Navy and Coast Guard to surround the town, then let’s see if local officials there can still give succor to criminals. Period.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]