From Malacañang to Greece

Of the President’s men, Rigoberto D. Tiglao is one man I hate to see leaving Malacañang. He’s one good asset of the Arroyo administration. Until he flies off to Athens next month as the Philippine ambassador to Greece, he is, thankfully, still head of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS), the "think tank" and "workhorse" of the President on a wide range of subjects and activities, i.e., policy formulation, technocrat administration, and expedient implementation and monitoring of government socio-economic programs.

This diplomatic initiative of the President to appoint an ambassador who has her complete trust and confidence signals the kind of diplomat the country is sending to Greece, particularly in the pursuance and consummation of bilateral agreements, organization and undertaking of two-way educational, cultural, trade and investment missions, and in safeguarding the interest of Filipino nationals in the European country.

Tiglao was surprised – and pleasantly, too – by his appointment. He told this columnist over a cup of coffee at a 5-star hotel, that Greece is a good choice, as he has been long interested in Greek art, culture and history. But his attention would be focused to a large degree on the plight of the 30,000  Philippine nationals working in that country.

Knowing Tiglao’s qualities, we can predict his tourism  program to include a vibrant two-way traffic of Filipinos going to Greece, and Greeks coming to the Philippines. 

Tiglao was appointed head of PMS in August 2004. Prior to that, he had served  as presidential spokesperson with Cabinet rank  in 2001, and concurrent press secretary the next year. After a six-month  research fellowship in Kyoto University, he resumed his role as presidential spokesperson and Presidential Chief of Staff (PSC),  and after two years, in August 2004, he was appointed head of PMS.

Over a cup of coffee at a 5-star hotel, Tiglao, 53,  talked about the PMS’ duties in simpler terms. Upon order of the President, a policy studies group looks at  presidential program ideas and see if there are funds for them. Another group checks on major obstacles in the implementation of projects. One obstacle found was red tape; for instance, it would take six months before an application for a fire clearance was released. Another function – conducted in collaboration with the Presidential Security Group and the Protocol office of Malacañang – is to study planned presidential activities outside of Malacañang primarily for security reasons.

Another role is to collate reports of all government agencies and feed them to the Office of the President. PMS, said Bobby, has a data base, but it requires  agencies to submit updated reports to his office.

The PMS has a staff of 400, with 200 of them based in Malacañang. One thing going for the staff," he said, "is that they are all professionals and  they have what we call esprit de corps." Many of them have post-graduate degrees from universities locally and abroad. He smiled when we suggested that they are "matinik."

Asked about his thoughts on Charter change, he said the country has employed the presidential system for long time, "We need some kind of paradigm shift."

To her credit, the President, said Tiglao, did not meddle in the work of the Consultative Commission (ConCom). She wanted the ConCom to discuss and debate on issues, but she made no orders nor messages to the committee members. She submitted the ConCom draft to Congress forthright.

I asked him how he reconciles the President’s castigation of the press as a contributor to the country’s destabilization, and his having fought for freedom of the press and expression during the martial law years.

He said he  was jailed for two years for student and labor organizing work – before he became a journalist. He attended Ateneo de Manila and the University of the Philippines for his bachelor of arts in philosophy.

But on press freedom, he said, "Even the origin of the press is to represent the interest of the nation. A good analogy is a student paper, which finds issues that would help promote the interest of the community. Now, ever since the Watergate Scandal, every journalist dreams of toppling the government, which was confirmed during the time of Estrada."

He said that when he wrote investigative stories, he did not call for the toppling of the Marcos government, but he exposed corrupt practices, and so it was up to the people to judge whether these practices were right or wrong.

For his journalistic work, Bobi received several prestigious awards.

He  started his career as a journalist in 1981 as a reporter at Business Day. He covered the labor, stock market, industry, and financial beats.  As Bobi relates it, because the paper focused on business news, "it fell through the cracks of martial law’s press suppression policy." Business Day was a much-respected publication but had to close down because of labor problems in1987. It was revived as today’s Business World.

In 1983, Tiglao received the Catholic Mass Media Award for best news reporter. 

From 1986 to 1989, he was with the team that reopened the Manila Chronicle in 1986 (after it was closed by Marcos in 1972), and made it "the best newspaper in the immediate post-People Power years,"

Then he moved on to the Far Eastern Economic Review as a correspondent, staying there from 1989 to 1999. The prestigious  Hong Kong-based international news magazine focuses on Asia, and is owned by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal group of newspapers.

In 1988-89, Tiglao  was a fellow at the Neiman  Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, a prestigious  journalism fellowship. At  Harvard  he conceptualized and proposed the establishment of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. PCIJ has evolved since its founding in 1989 as a respected organization for in-depth, investigative journalism.

He received the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) award for print journalism from the Philippine Jaycees in 1991, and the Mitsubishi Corp. Foundation’s Asia Economic Journalist of the Year in 1991.

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