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By Alecks P. Pabico, Philippine Center For
Investigative Journalism
First of two parts
In May, speculations were rife that Romulo Neri
was returning to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA)
as director general and socioeconomic planning secretary by August.
The nasty rumor had so distressed some at NEDA
that on a bulletin board next to the ground-floor elevator lobby
that had been turned into a sort of freedom wall was posted this
note from an anonymous commenter:
“I don’t think bringing back Neri to NEDA
will be good for the agency. We are now finding out that he
maintained a group of advisers/consultants in the likes of Jun
Lozada who seemed to act as fixers/moderators of greed. Imagine
that! Neri seemed to be running another office corresponding with
NEDA staffs whose sole purpose was to take charge of the wheeling
and dealing in government. Shall we allow that again?”
It turned out to be a sentiment reflective of
what the majority at NEDA actually felt about Neri’s supposed
“third coming.” An informal survey conducted by the Organization
of NEDA Employees (ONE), the officially recognized association of
the agency’s rank-and-file personnel, would eventually confirm
this.
Understandably, the NEDA staff could probably
breathe a sigh of relief at the recent Malacañang announcement that
their former chief is headed to the Social Security System (SSS) as
its new administrator—although they remain wary that defeated 2007
administration senatorial bet, former Sen. Ralph Recto, would be
appointed as the next director general.
Meanwhile, back in the public limelight, Neri
has begged his critics to first check his qualifications before
assailing his new appointment. His record in government, he said,
could speak for itself, pointing naysayers to how he had performed
in various capacities in different agencies—as director general of
NEDA, as secretary of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM),
and more recently as chairman of the Commission on Higher Education
(CHED).
“I think I performed satisfactorily,” Neri
said. Asserting that he is qualified to head the SSS, he then
rattled off, in his usual subdued estimation of his self-worth, his
track record in investment banking and pension-fund management,
backed no less by a master’s degree in business administration,
major in finance and international management from the prestigious
University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
Neri will assume the SSS post on August 1,
taking over from outgoing-President and Chief Executive Officer
Corazon de la Paz who had served the state-run pension fund for
seven years. The financial institution administers the assets and
contributions—currently worth P248 billion—of some 27 million
private members.
Though de la Paz cited health reasons for her
resignation, her replacement had politics written all over it. De la
Paz first intimated how she has not been able to accustom herself to
the workings of government, indicating a preference to return to her
work in the private sector. But upon further questioning by the
media, she eventually relented to a little known fact: she had stood
up against the use of SSS members’ funds for the government’s
pro-poor agenda, in the process offending the powers that be.
“Using the fund has limits. [It] cannot be
used to finance pro-poor projects of the government unless it is
defined in the [SSS] charter,” de la Paz explained, serving up a
warning to SSS members and the public of the potential danger of the
fund being misused.
With Neri at the helm of the SSS, many have
indeed expressed fear that the funds will be used for partisan
political interests. Both Malacañang and Neri’s avowal that the
funds will not be touched for government’s welfare programs has
not helped assuage such concerns for the very reason that the
appointment boils down, not so much to the issue of competence, but
to Neri’s integrity and credibility—and that of the one who
appointed him—as a public official.
Competence not an issue
By all means, Neri, born February 1, 1950,
possesses the sterling academic competence in his field of
expertise. He holds a degree in business administration, major in
marketing from the University of the Philippines, where he graduated
magna cum laude and class valedictorian.
Prior to his stint in government, he was
associate professor at the Asian Institute of Management and
corporate planning and finance officer of several companies, like
the Canlubang Sugar Estate, Canlubang Pulp and Manufacturing Corp.,
C-J Yulo and Sons Inc., Philippine National Oil Co., Luzon
Stevedoring Corp. and Mobil Oil Philippines Inc.
His first government job was as director general
of the Congressional Planning and Budget Office of the House of
Representatives in 1990. As the office’s chief until 2002, he
dispensed advice to House leaders on socioeconomic issues, in
particular monetary and financial policies, development financing,
and the national government budget.
Erstwhile colleagues at the House office recall
their former director general in high regard. “He was very
professional, very broadminded, straightforward,” said Rodolfo
Vicerra, who was at the time the office’s executive director and
who later assumed Neri’s post when he left in 2002.
Though Neri’s training was in finance, he
understood the workings of the macroeconomy, said Vicerra. “His
long stay in Congress allowed him to read a lot of books,
particularly on economics, so much so that he has become a champion
of competition and the market that many formally trained economists
would care to admit.”
It was at the Congressional Planning and Budget
Office where Neri started nurturing the advocacies for which he has
come to be known for, like going against anti-competitive,
monopolistic and oligarchic structures, regulatory capture, and
anything that would limit the efficiency of the economy.
In 2002, Neri earned his first appointment as
NEDA director general, a post he would return to on February 5,
2006, after a brief stint as budget secretary in 2005. At the
national socioeconomic planning agency, Neri distinguished himself
as a NEDA chief with wide academic and policy background,
particularly in finance, public policy and microeconomics.
“He had more of a microeconomic bent in the
work of NEDA, particularly in microeconomic analysis at the firm
level, which made us work with emphasis on knowing more sector and
inter-sector-specific details,” said a senior director who has
been with NEDA since 1989 during the last months of Solita
Monsod’s term as director general.
Such emphasis, the director added, required from
the NEDA staff to have ready in-depth sectoral knowledge when Neri
reviewed and discussed their work with them, in contrast to the
normal process of first going back to client agencies to get more
information.
Neri’s micro-interventions had at times meant
going outside the purview of NEDA’s primary work or mandate, which
essentially involved preparing and coordinating the country’s
socioeconomic and development plans. One staff recalls, for
instance, an Asian Development Bank-funded project that Neri pushed
to strengthen the provincial planning process, which, to him, was
rendered ineffective by the lack of technical know-how and budgeting
focus of local government planners.
Known to be impatient with bureaucratic inertia,
Neri had also caused the resuscitation of inactive government bodies
like the Philippine Export-Import Credit Agency (PhilEXIM) to help
finance infrastructure projects. He also maximized the use of the
Industrial Guarantee and Loans Fund to address even issues
considered marginal to NEDA’s functions, for instance, increasing
the productivity of coconut farmers.
“He thinks ‘outside the box,’” another
NEDA staff said, an indication of his rather consuming interest in
what works while being fully aware of how institutions take a long
time to reform.
Only that Neri’s tour of duty at NEDA had more
than just this endearing facet of a maverick technocrat to it, and
which should be instructive as to how he would conduct himself over
at the SSS.
‘Leading than managing’
Top-level officials at NEDA have commended
Neri’s preference for a “more horizontal working relationship”
with the management and staff, which they say was what made him work
“more easily and directly with people than through structures.”
“The time that he was in NEDA,” shares the
same senior management official, “he was to me more on ‘leading
than managing’ as he left to the career officials in the
Secretariat the latter function to exercise more decentrally.”
That, however, did not appeal to many at NEDA
who saw how Neri was unlike his predecessors, who were more
accessible to the agency’s rank-and-file. Not a few NEDA staff
have observed how he was not into employee relations, exerting no
effort to connect, dialogue, or reach out to them. They say he also
wasn’t as concerned with the internal operations of the office,
both in administrative and personnel matters despite his heavy
dependence on their technical outputs.
Edwin Daiwey, acting assistant director of the
Development Information Staff said, “He was more technocratic in
the sense that his concerns were more on what the staff produced but
less on how they could be motivated to work better in terms of
improved remuneration, the working environment, and working
relationships.”
In contrast to former directors general, Neri
also rarely held meetings with senior officials that would have
served as venues to discuss or thresh out important issues affecting
the agency.
As such, Neri’s term, Daiwey added, marked the
unraveling of the strong teamwork ethic that used to be the hallmark
of NEDA. Such a situation had subsequently led to squabbles among
his deputies and staffs.
NEDA ‘outsider’
If the relationship had been somewhat distant
and tentative, this was probably because many in NEDA regarded Neri
as an “outsider.”
He was, after all, not exactly from academe
(meaning from the School of Economics of the University of the
Philippines) the way the other previous directors general were.
Because he was not an economist, he was also not embedded in the
NEDA culture like some of his more recent predecessors (e.g. Felipe
Medalla and Dante Canlas) who first worked as deputy directors
general before being appointed director general.
Without the benefit of a previous professional
working relationship, the NEDA staff members were thus wary of their
erstwhile boss from the very start. Even then, there was also the
added baggage of his long-time association with Jose de Venecia Jr.,
a Marcos-era consummate traditional politician known for cobbling
“rainbow coalitions” in the Lower House during his 12 years as
Speaker by offering positions, power and money to win the loyalty
and support of congressmen.
That Neri played politics, engaged with
politicians and is himself a politician, begun to dawn on some of
the NEDA management officials and staff when he surrounded himself
with a retinue of “consultants” who were accountable only to
him.
Neri also probably felt his detachment that he
had to bring along with him to NEDA people whom he could trust. His
consultants, many of whom were not known to the NEDA staff, were
like a parallel office which acted as his political arm. At first,
some at NEDA appreciated the arrangement as it insulated the staff
from politics, preferring not to deal with politicians and just
continue to do their work professionally. Later, on instructions by
Neri himself, NEDA officials had had occasions to interact with his
consultants. Even his meetings with them were recorded as part of
his official schedule.
To be continued
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