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The eagerness of subalterns to please could sometimes
work against the best interest of their own bosses. Take the case of
Estrella Elamparo, legal counsel of the Government Service Insurance
and System.
Elamparo has been described
as the principal GSIS talking head in the ongoing war between the
pension fund’s general manager Winston Garcia and the Lopez-owned
Manila Electric Company (Meralco). Last weekend she issued a press
statement claiming that neither her boss “nor any member of his
family” were involved in Visayas Electric Company (VECO), whose
franchise to distribute electricity covers Cebu City and nearby
areas.
VECO is owned by the
Aboitiz family; it has for its legal counsel a lawyer named Jess
Anthony N. Garcia.
Did Elamparo make her
summary denial without checking the facts—particularly the family
background of her own boss?
For the GSIS lawyer’s
information, Jess Anthony N. Garcia—the Aboitiz lawyer—belongs
to two prominent Cebuano clans: the Neris and the Garcias. He is
Winston Garcia’s nephew. He is the eldest son of Alvin Garcia, the
former Cebu City mayor, who in turn is the younger brother of Jesus
“Sonny” Garcia Jr., onetime transportation secretary during the
Ramos administration.
Alvin and Sonny are
Winston’s first cousins.
Sonny Garcia also sits in
the board of Vivant Corporation as director. Vivant is the holding
firm of the Aboitizes’ VECO. Yes, the same VECO that gave Cebuanos
those unforgettable rolling brownouts in the early 2000s.
For a long time, too, Sonny
Garcia has been lawyering for the Aboitizes, especially for their
shipping business.
The Philippines may consist
of 7,100 islands but it is really just a small town. As a
coffee-shop wit put it: Everybody knows who everybody is lawyering
for.
What was Elamparo thinking
when she issued the press release denying her boss’s links to VECO—and,
by extension, the Aboitizes? Did the GSIS spokeswoman, in her zeal
to engage Meralco in a word war, really think she could mislead the
public?
Elamparo’s bungling has proved
costly to Garcia’s so-called crusade against Meralco. After firmly
jamming her proverbial foot in her mouth, she may no longer be
effective as his spokeswoman.
Hereon the public will view
her remarks with skepticism, if not outright disbelief. The
impression will remain that her slip-up resulted from either mental
dishonesty or plain incompetence.
Imagine how the Alliance of
Concerned Teachers will react to Elamparo in the aftermath of her
blunder. The GSIS legal counsel publicly pilloried ACT when it
questioned Garcia’s motives in his bid to take over Meralco. The
impression is that she tried to “kill” the VECO issue because
that would ultimately link the Aboitizes to the GSIS bid to take
over Meralco.
Now that the faux pas has been
exposed, observers can no longer be faulted for suspecting that, in
going after the Meralco management, GSIS has a motive other than
working for lower electric bills.
Elamparo’s gaffe has not
only embarrassed Garcia and the Aboitizes, it may actually have cost
the putative bid—if true—to grab the country’s biggest
electric distribution utility from one powerful family in order to
hand it to another.
For his part, Garcia cannot
say that Elmparo was merely mistaken in her supercilious dismissal
of the disclosures about his links to VECO. That would only
reinforce the perception that her other verbal assaults on Meralco
had been less than accurate—or, worse, less than honest.
The worst-case scenario, of
course, is for Elamparo to say she stands by her statement that no
Garcia is connected to the Aboitizes’ VECO. Of course, she could
say that her GSIS boss has nothing to do with what his
nephew—aside from his cousin—does for the Aboitizes. If so, does
she really think the public could be so naïve?
Elamparo, therefore, stands to be
the first casualty in the GSIS-Meralco conflict. Unfortunately, she
may have been hit by a stray bullet fired from her own camp.
Ultimately, Elamparo’s
howler underscores the futility of the media war GSIS launched
against Meralco. As a leading businessman said in a TV interview,
Garcia should have kept this quarrel within the confines of the
Meralco boardroom.
Now that he has brought the
dispute out in the open there will surely be many casualties—the
first being Elamparo.
Who’s next?
As I mentioned in this column
Monday, this could be one war where everybody loses.
Tet clarifies
Re this column’s Wednesday
edition, titled “Tet helps foil BIR, Customs racket,” Bataan
Governor Enrique Garca clarified that the syndicate that managed to
siphon billions of pesos in checks payable to the Bureau of Internal
Revenue and Bureau of Customs to fictitious accounts need not have
actually involved BIR and BOC personnel.
Aside from the bank
employees who colluded with the syndicate, the racket could have
been instigated and run by anyone familiar with the system that
requires tax and duty payments to be made through authorized agent
banks, Garcia said.
He also expressed
appreciation again for the contribution of PCHC president Eduardo J.
Katigbak Jr., president of Philippine Clearing House Corporation.
“All I really did was to
give him a call last April to explain to him the problem and how
PCHC could help in finally solving it,” Garcia recalled. “In
just two weeks time Katigbak was able to issue a memo dated May 9
requiring clearing banks to print/spray a specific tracer/identification
band at the back of checks payable to the BIR and the BOC . . .”
The Bataan chief executive
also noted that Katigbak’s memo even acknowledged that the
suggestion came from Garcia—even though he did not ask for it.
dansoy26@yahoo.com
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