E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Another one bites the dust
Thursday, 08 23, 2007
While abroad, a considerable amount of my reading time had been spent in surfing the on-line editions of Philippine dailies, with a single-minded interest on the messy reorganization in the Senate committees following the election of Manny Villar, Jr. as Senate president.
So no one could blame me when last week, while on a visit to the Senate, I got the shock of my life to find out that lawyer Oscar Gravides Yabes had been replaced as Senate secretary.
So the “Solid 8” among the opposition senators were not the only casualties of the Villar Senate presidency. Yabes, whom the 3,000 members of the Senate Secretariat endearingly call Ogy, also had to bite the dust — the lone casualty in the Secretariat. This piece of news greatly perplexes me. Why could this happen to a man who has served the longest as Senate secretary, and who has fulfilled his responsibilities and performed his duties professionally? Politics, perhaps? (I was a victim of Senate politics myself in 1998, but that is another story.)
For eight straight years, Ogy held the helm of the Secretariat with a steady, impartial hand. No one else has managed to stay that long. Credit that to his performance.
Ogy has performed well all these years. He professionalized the staff and got rid of the scalawags who have made the Secretariat their source of ill-gotten income — although my friend Noli Matel points to one in the Administrative and Financial Services Group (who should have been kicked out many yeas ago).
He introduced innovations in the active workings of the Secretariat. His predecessors might dispute the fact, but Ogy is unquestionably the Senate secretary who must take the credit for modernization of support operations for the senators of the realm. He allowed many of the staff to attend professional courses and seminars to augment their competencies in governance and parliamentary practice.
Himself an accomplished writer and a former editor-in-chief of UP’s Philippine Collegian, Ogy caused the publication of many educative Senate-related articles, and improved the contextual formats of the Record and Journal of the Senate. He transformed the Public Information and Media Relations Office into a neutral venue for all senators, rather than as a mouthpiece only of the Senate president. Ogy introduced the Kapihan sa Senado, which is now the prime source of unexpurgated news and sound bites from our senators.
If one draws an analogy between the Senate Secretariat and a projectile, he would undoubtedly place Ogy as the ogive — the tapering forward part — of both. That’s how Ogy is regarded by a great many who long for Ogy’s brand of management: sharp, forthright, upfront and enlightened. And the windfall of financial benefits for the Secretariat — rice allowance, food assistance, medical benefits, etcetera — were all at the instance of Ogy, including the P10,000 as inflationary adjustment bonus and the P12,200-financial relief allowance authorized by Villar two weeks ago.
I say Ogy has served professionally despite the politics. True, he was originally elected under the term of former Senate President Franklin Drilon, his fraternity brother in the Sigma Rho, but he has never served as a Drilon minion. He managed the Secretariat with the skill and competence of a true professional, unheedful of, and uninfluenced by, the pressures of politics. Perhaps, this sterling trait was Ogy’s undoing - his refusal to play ball under the new leadership.
The Senate Secretariat is a professional corps of civil servants. In all jurisdictions, the Secretariat is insulated from politics; that is why we see its staff members and officers serving for many long years, despite the changes in leadership. For a while — at least, for eight years — Ogy was the prime example of professional management as the constant, despite the frequent changes in Senate leadership.
One can only speculate that the reason for Ogy’s unfortunate termination as Senate secretary was something that happened between the elections last May and the assumption of Villar on July 23. Might it have been the falling out between Drilon and Villar? If that were the case, Villar, the businessman whose cash certainly isn’t petty, has become petty, as petty as he wants to be in dismissing everyone — including those who helped him take the Senate presidency once more — as goners.
Casualties of political power plays should not extend to the Secretariat, although admittedly, it is really the prerogative of the Senate president to choose his Senate secretary. But then again, why take out somebody who is performing well, such as Ogy.
Ogy and I had coffee the other day. He was not bitter or petulant about his unceremonious removal. Rather, he rued the day when the corps of professional civil servants that he left behind would be treated as squatters under Villar’s leadership. Threatened with eviction if they would not do his bidding in his quest for the presidency of the land, these competent civil servants might as well start learning the obeisant arts of civility and servitude.
Reader Aurora Riel, reacting to my article last Sunday on "The opposition is no more," says, “Thanks (for painting) the true face of Villar.” Aurora, Villar’s true face, like his memory, is photoshopped: The face of the candidate who got elected under the opposition banner is far different from the senator now sitting in the podium at the Senate.
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