Cesar Chiong and his battle for reforms

It really is more fun in the Philippines, even for syndicates and scalawags or the many nameless government employees who are benefitting from a system of governance that is perennially broken. Tuloy ang ligaya!

Welcome to Manila, welcome to mayhem. This, indeed, is the Philippines where the few brave reformists or those who dare to fix our impossibly broken bureaucracy are ostracized, punished or worse, become the target of an orchestrated, well-funded attack.

This is an all-too common story in our country, especially in government agencies and state-owned corporations that make a lot of money or wield a lot of power and influence.

Cesar Chiong found out about this soon enough when he tried to institute reforms at the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) after he stepped in as general manager last year. He became the subject of intrigues and vicious attacks. At one point, he even lost his job for a few hours; Malacañang announced a new GM, only to withdraw the announcement later on.

He stayed on despite finding himself in an overcrowded snake pit.

But Chiong’s fight just got tougher now. On Wednesday, we learned that the Office of the Ombudsman ordered him dismissed from government service after putting him on preventive suspension last May.

Chiong became the subject of an anonymous complaint after implementing a plan to re-assign 285 airport personnel, which was meant to make the country’s main gateway more efficient.

It’s puzzling how it has come to this. For one, not one of the affected employees was terminated and majority or 201 of the reassignments came from the airport police department whose reassignments were done pursuant to the security requirements in the four passenger airport terminals at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and were all recommended by the Airport Police Department chief and AGM for Security and Emergency Services.

Ruffling feathers

This is the problem when you try to implement reforms in the Philippines. First of all, the system is flawed by design because there is a parallel system with fixers and brokers – and their big bosses – who make money. It can also be about multimillion-peso contracts. Obviously those benefiting from this broken system want to keep the status quo.

Isn’t it a curious case that whoever tries to institute reforms at the airport ends up in court?

The young and audacious boys of Megawide come to mind. When they submitted a bold proposal to rehabilitate NAIA, they suddenly found themselves faced with an Anti-Dummy complaint, a case that was later on dismissed.

Chiong, an aviation veteran with 30 years experience with Philippine Airlines and San Miguel Corp., is a no nonsense executive who gave up his lucrative job in the private sector to help fix our airport and give the public a better flying experience.

And this is what happens.

But Chiong isn’t giving up. He knows he is fighting the good fight and he will fight all the way to clear his name and push for much-needed airport reforms.

I’ve personally experienced the positive changes he made at NAIA even before I actually met him.

He removed X-ray machines obstructing terminal entrances and eliminated security guards flagging vehicles before accessing the ramp.

Chiong saw these measures as unnecessary as they incurred extensive costs amounting to hundreds of millions of pesos annually, while exacerbating the public’s frustrations.

Additionally, during his stint, MIAA successfully collected outstanding receivables totaling billions of pesos. To illustrate, MIAA’s cash balance, which stood at P5 billion in July 2022, has now surged to approximately P15 billion, and the office is now debt-free.

Furthermore, MIAA made P1.9 billion in net income last year, a stark turnaround from the combined losses of P3.6 billion suffered during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.

Passenger count also rose to around 31 million in 2022 from 7.8 million in 2021, with NAIA expecting to handle close to 47 million passengers by the end of this year.

By the way, nearly 800 airport personnel have rallied behind Chiong and assistant general manager Irene Montalbo by signing a Manifesto, saying “only now have they experienced transparent and honest management in the agency.”

Predecessors

In his petition with the Court of Appeals filed long before the dismissal decision of the ombudsman, Chiong noted that his predecessors reassigned even larger numbers of personnel without facing any legal repercussions – 646 employees reassigned by former M/Gen. Jose Angel Honrado (Ret.) and 397 personnel reassigned by Ed Monreal during comparable periods.

Chiong also questioned the jurisdiction of the ombudsman. He said the anonymous complainants were supposed to have exhausted administrative remedies first with the Civil Service Commission.

Just the same, he said that as general manager, he had the authority to re-assign personnel, which he did without any diminution in their status, pay and rank.

Chiong is facing a tough battle but he is determined to win it. I stand with Chiong and reformists like him.

Every nation talks about the myth of the golden age but ours is always just the golden age of corruption or inefficiency or just the golden age of nothing.

Some just want the bad old days to continue, with their multimillion-peso contracts and all. But hope is eternal as I always say and someday, those who fight the good fight will finally win.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.