Sunday, March 21, 2010

Remembering Emi Boncodin

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Remembering Emi Boncodin
Sunday, 03 21, 2010

On a fine day in September 2006 — I had just shepherded the Kabul Declaration Against Corruption at a conference held at the Serena Hotel, and was about to leave for my UN quarters — I heard a familiar voice asking the hotel concierge what rooms were available and how much they cost. The gravelly yet sing-song inflections took me back in time to my Senate and UP days, and I was very sure to whom it belonged. And true enough, it was Emi, a.k.a. former Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin.

What was a very fragile Bikolana like her doing in war-torn Afghanistan? She told me she had come as a consultant to the Afghan Ministry of Finance in the preparation of the national budget. Emi stayed at the hotel only for two days, preferring to stay at the more frugal quarters for consultants. She did save a lot in changing residence, and took pride in being able to spend her savings buying a rare indulgence for an austere woman like her: a hand-spun cashmere shawl — the famous pashmina.

The thoroughness of Emi’s work was evident in the neatness with which the budget of Afghanistan for 2007 breezed through the two Houses of the Afghan parliament, whereas the 2006 budget was hardly one that could be called a national financial plan, and therefore had a rough time at the parliament.

In 2007, I was handling the parliamentary side of the budget process, and Emi’s inputs to me greatly enriched the advice I gave to the Wolesi Jirga (counterpart of our House of Representatives) and the Meshrano Jirga (the Senate of the Afghan parliament). And in an admirable gesture of the bayanihan spirit found among fellow Filipinos in foreign lands, Emi even graciously helped me draw up the framework of a Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office for the Afghan parliament.

Outside of our work as consultants, I got to discover a lot about Emi. In the quaint streets of Kabul where internationals like us could safely saunter during our free time — Flower Street where kebab stalls (which Emi never liked at all) abound but has only a sprinkling of flower stands; Chicken Street where no chicken is sold but is overflowing with carpets and Afghan bric-a-bracs; or, in the restaurants which had security clearance for internationals to dine in — we talked about home, and the political environment we left behind. Emi wanted a respite from the murky bureaucracy back home, and a consultancy in Kabul was a very opportune excuse.

Emi talked about simple living, a lifestyle she had imposed on herself despite the perks that went with her having been a high career government official. I could not believe that here was a lady who simply had no cravings for material possessions, nor a predisposition for the fancy! A plain and small bag that never left her side contained all she needed for her stay in Kabul. Back home, this simplicity spoke more eloquently through the simple house she lived in, and her aversion to anything that would announce her high station in government — no mansion in a gated subdivision, no fancy cars, no diamonds and pearls, and no obsequious lackeys trailing behind her.

In one meeting at the Afghan Ministry of Finance, where I chanced upon her one Sunday morning (Sunday is workday in Afghanistan), Emi was totally conspicuous by the simplicity — almost to the point of tawdriness — of her dress, except with the recently acquired pashmina draped over her head, while all the rest around her, including two other lady expatriates, were in their Sunday’s best.

But beneath the simplicity was an innate dignity. I remember how Emi’s countenance lit up with pride and transformed the features of her plain, unadorned face (a face that made no pretensions to cosmetic enhancements) into something that approached a seraphic serenity when she recounted to me her decision to join the Cabinet members who dissociated themselves from the Arroyo government in July 2005. I remember, too, how the same sublime smile gave way to a gloomy, black look when she told me of her misgivings about where our nation was headed under a government that seemed impervious to the scandals besetting it.

And beneath the innate dignity was a steadfast devotion to duty. It is amazing how Emi could subordinate a serious medical problem to her professional responsibilities. She was determined to have been in need of a kidney transplant in 2005, but Emi, as she would confide to me, had it postponed until Congress had passed the budget that year. Imagine having just come from a kidney transplant, and now she was in Kabul where the nearest decent medical facility was three and a half hours away by plane in Dubai! Here was a frail woman who would not allow what ails her to get in the way of her utilizing her expertise to heal the ills of society, whether it be in the Philippines or in Afghanistan.

Emi loved the academe, the fertile ground where she sought to impart her many years of experience to students at the UP National Center for Public Administration and Governance. She must have relished the thought that by her example, students looking to join the government would be inspired not to lie, cheat or steal. She must have taught with a passion that strove to reach beyond compassion, that when she chanced upon me teaching some members of the Afghan parliament how to conduct oversight, Emi said: “Pag nakita mong lumaki ang mga mata nila, wala ka nang iibigin pa.”

At one lunch meeting I and Tom Achacoso (who was then visiting Kabul as consultant to the Afghan Ministry of Labor) had with her at the Bahay Kubo, a restaurant operated by a Filipino couple, Emi shunned the rich food that had been prepared for us. Following a strict diet, she settled for the simple soup. But she regaled Tom and me with juicy morsels of her love affair with the academe after she had left government service. And there was one word she kept repeating whenever the conversation veered toward government service: transparency. Transparency eliminates thievery, Emi said.

I saw Emi a few months back at the NCPAG in UP Diliman where she used to teach, and where my wife also teaches. She was many pounds lighter than when I saw her last in Kabul. She asked me what had happened to the claim of several laid-off workers of the Metro Rail Transit, for whom Emi had prepared a supplemental budget, and was dismayed to learn that it had taken already seven years and no benefits had been given to them. She also said she had a baby that would soon be born, and asked me to join her at its birth. (Knowing she was a spinster, I had to gasp in disbelief until she laughingly told me it was a “baby” in the field of governance.) It is only now, in the eulogies delivered to keep the memory of our friend Emi alive, that I learned Emi’s baby was a project designed to build the capacity of civil society to monitor a budget that, otherwise, perennially gets overstated, realigned or stolen.

We parted that evening with the customary beso-beso, and I cajoled her: “Punta ulit tayo sa Kabul!” But that was not to be. I will be going back to Kabul after the Holy Week, alone.

Emi now rests in the country that she has served so well, honestly, and with distinction. It will be many years from now when we will have another Emilia Boncodin guarding the budget. And there might never come a time for another Emi, espousing transparency and accountability, who lived simply and left public service untouched by scandal.

Khuda hafiz doste man. Wa tashakur az yaad bood — Goodbye, my friend. Thank you for the memories.

For comments about this website:Webmaster@tribune.net.ph

No comments: