BOC customized to ex-military men?

Appointed last April 23, Bureau of Customs commissioner Alberto Lina will stay as head of this agency for barely a year and two months. As a coterminous official, Lina will have to submit his courtesy resignation to whoever is elected to take over from President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III.

Lina, along with other presidential appointees, must resign – not necessarily on the same day – when President Aquino steps down from office on June 30, 2016. Lina and the other Aquino appointed officials in all government agencies will remain in their respective offices until such time the new president names his own appointees.

Lina once headed Air21, a customs forwarder and brokering company he put up more than two decades ago. His heading Customs is actually a second-take for him.

He was first appointed as Customs chief in February, 2005 during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Lina, however, joined his boss, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima and eight other Arroyo officials who resigned en masse. They were later collectively called as “Hyatt 10.”

So Lina was a natural choice for Purisima who convinced him to return to the Customs bureau. Lina was appointed to replace erstwhile Customs chief John Sevilla. President Aquino named Lina immediately after accepting Sevilla’s resignation. It would be recalled that Sevilla created quite a stir in media when he claimed “politics” had something to do with his resignation, but he subsequently backtracked.

Come to think of it, Lina would be the third Customs commissioner to serve in the Aquino administration. The first Customs chief of P-Noy was former Muntinlupa City Rep.Rozzano “Ruffy” Biazon. Although he served the longest stint as Customs chief, Biazon’s exit was also attended by a string of controversies, foremost of which was triggered by President Aquino’ tirades against the graft-ridden agency in his penultimate state of the nation address in Congress last year.

Stoked by Sevilla’s claims of politics, Lina thus began his very short stint at the Customs bureau amid political controversy. It is widely known in political circles that Lina purportedly gave a handsome contribution to the campaign kitty of then senator Aquino as the Liberal Party (LP) presidential standard-bearer and his defeated running-mate, former senator Manuel Roxas II during the May, 2010 elections.

Appearing last Wednesday as featured guest in our weekly Kapihan sa Manila Bay at Luneta Hotel, Lina merely shrugged off these old issues being raised anew against him. He vowed to rather seek ways to make Customs an efficient and less graft-prone “24/7” agency of the government.

Being once in a brokering business himself, Lina admitted the systems and procedures at the bureau leave much to be desired. He noted the use of X-rays and pre-shipment inspection schemes are some of the measures intended to eliminate the perennial problem of port congestion.

Customs started implementing last Oct.1 the Terminal Appointments Booking System that would essentially reduce port congestion and at the same time lessen traffic in Metro Manila with the spread of the 24-hour period for some 8,000 container trucks to pick up and transfer their load to various points of destination.

For the medium-term, Lina looks forward to the passage soon into law of the proposed Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA) bill as something that would help him implement institutional reforms for the agency. Lina said he was assured by authors of the CMTA bill that it would likely be approved by the 16th Congress before this year ends.

The Senate version of the CMTA bill authored by Sen. Sonny Angara is up for approval on second reading while the House version, authored by OWWA party-list Rep. Sharon Garin, is calendared for approval on third reading.

“It’s (CMTA bill) approval into law will be a Christmas gift for the Filipinos, especially for the balikbayans,” Lina told us at the breakfast forum. Lina particularly cited the controversial inspection of balikbayan boxes would be eliminated with the updating of the tariff rules and duty-free privileges of Filipino balikbayan returning home for good in the country.

Lina impressed upon us he would strive hard to find ways to make the agency meet its revenue collection target this year of P439.59 billion with the advent of borderless trading of the global market.

Lina cited the fact the Philippines will be adopting the zero tariff regime starting December this year as member state of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) economic integration.

With little time left he has at the Customs bureau, Lina underscored the need for everyone at his agency to get their act together. Although he did not go into details, Lina hinted some internal struggle in the agency that he has to deal with amid the pernicious problem on smuggling and corruption.

At the House hearing for the proposed 2016 budget of the Finance department, Valenzuela City Rep. Magtanggol Gunigundo questioned the appointment of retired military generals as customs district collectors, most of whom the lawmaker noticed failed to meet their respective collection targets.

Ex-military men now at the bureau include retired Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff Gen.Jesus Dellosa, one of Lina’s six deputy customs commissioners. Following his mandatory retirement from the AFP in January, 2013, President Aquino appointed Dellosa as Customs deputy commissioner for Intelligence Group (IG).

As a reserve Army lieutenant colonel, Lina swears he has no problem working with these retired generals.

It used to be the Department of Transportation and Communications where ex-generals were given posts when they return to civilian life. It sort of became a “golden parachute” after their military service to the country.

But Congress leaders do not agree to such militarized set-up in a civilian agency.

Apparently, it’s now the Customs bureau that has become “customized” for retired military or police generals as the next career service for these former men in uniform.