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College and university level educators have been urging Malacañang
to relieve temporary chairman of the Commission on Higher Education
(CHED) Secretary Romulo Neri of his job at the Commission.
We agree. And we offer the President our
unsolicited advice that he should be given back his old job at the
National Economic Development Authority (NEDA).
Putting Neri in CHED was an obviously
politically expedient move. The ZTE NBN deal scandal erupted after
he told opposition senators about alleged bribery efforts of former
Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos and that he had told President
Gloria M. Arroyo of these sordid maneuvers. The senators had him as
their guest in an executive session during which Neri stopped
testifying because he became too ill or to afraid to continue.
Taking him out of NEDA, on whose findings and
recommendations Cabinet and presidential decisions about projects
like the ZTE NBN hinge, was obviously a Palace ploy to cool Senate
and media attention on the scandal.
It did not work. The scandal still grew. Sec.
Neri’s trusted consultant on projects, Noel “Jun” Lozada, was
made to go to Hong Kong. He returned, was abducted and made to sign
affidavits containing false statements. He sought the protective
company of nuns and blew the whistle at a dawn press conference.
Finally he appeared at Senate hearings where he told all that he
knew.
Grim executive privilege
The next thing the Senate wanted was to have
Sec. Neri appear at the hearing investigating the ZTE NBN deal. But
Neri succeeded in getting a much-maligned Supreme Court
decision—from which Chief Justice Reynato Puno and other justices
— dissented —giving Neri and other government officials the
power to invoke presidential executive privilege so that they do not
have to tell the Senate anything about any matter, including
criminal acts, they had discussed with the President of the
Philippines.
That decision makes a mockery of the principle
that the Executive, the Judicial and the Legislative are co-equal
and separate institutions that live in a balance of power. Each is
given a certain amount of power to check the abuses and crime the
officials of the other two branches of government might be guilty
of. The High Court’s decision now gives the President and her
Cabinet members and other high officials the license to continue
engaging in all kinds of criminal acts while enjoying immunity from
having to talk about these matters to senators conducting probes.
Now that Neri can invoke executive privilege,
the President has no reason to keep him from doing the job he is
most qualified for—the NEDA director general.
The President’s announcement that Neri was to
be transferred to CHED (which rudely told then CHED Chairman Carlito
Puno that he was being fired) contained a good reason for the move.
Neri was supposed to have the special talent to solve the problem of
the job mismatch between the business and industrial sectors and the
college graduates marching out of Philippine colleges and
universities. As far as we in the media could ascertain from sources
in the CHED, Neri has not done much work to solve this jobs mismatch
problem.
Instead, we have witnessed the Philippines
Association of Colleges and Universities (PACU) and its 170 members
calling for the immediate replacement of Neri because he has
“played deaf and blind” to tertiary education concerns.
PACU is the country’s principal association of
higher-education institutions. Its president, Gonzalo Duque, is also
the deputy chief of the Philippine Overseas Employment
Administration, one of whose tasks is to address problems of job
mismatching.
Duque said, “Neri’s brilliance is misplaced.
He should be placed somewhere else where his brilliance can be put
to good use. Apparently, the acting chairman has other things in
mind than attending to higher education concerns. In the past, Neri
said he would get out of CHED fast and that he had no ambitions of
staying there longer. Clearly, his intention is different from what
he’s actually doing.”
Humorous Peter Principle
The humorous Peter Principle — “In a
hierarchical structure, a person tends to be promoted to his level
of incompetence” – has apparently caught up with Neri at the
CHED.
Duque says CHED needs a chairman who is
“really focused on the job.” On a scale of 10 to 0, he gives
Neri’s performance a failing grade of 4.
Other critics of Neri’s performance at CHED
have said that the commission is now “in a state of suspended
animation” because the chairman is not giving it the direction it
needs.
Insiders, as well as visitors from both the
private and public sectors, say Neri hardly reports for work.
Members of the Coordinating Council of Private
Educational Associations (COCOPEA) lament the state of affairs at
CHED. They are disgusted by Neri’s neglect of the commission. They
talk about his lack of a doctoral degree which, by law, is among the
qualifications a CHED chairman must have. They warn that if Neri
doesn’t resign from CHED, the COCOPEA would challenge Neri’s
appointment in court.
Last year, immediately after President
Arroyo’s announcement that Neri would be replacing then CHED
Chairman Puno, the Philippine Association of State Universities and
Colleges (Pasuc) issued a statement asking the President to
reconsider her stand. Pasuc warned that Neri, not having the
qualifications, experience and standing of a good education manager,
would not do a good job. They were prophetic.
President Arroyo will do herself and the nation
a good deed if she immediately returns Secretary Neri to NEDA.
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