People's Day turn into a peefull day

Secretary Lito Atienza of the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources is a more consummate politician than he is a government bureaucrat. But recently he has allowed—in full view of members of media, that he too is capable of being a 'red tape' expert.

In the April 25, 2008 People's Day media event, this is really a pampapogi (window dressing/wag-the-dog) event designed to boost Atienza's political stock, Atienza was confronted by someone who may well turn out to be my favorite no-nonsense technocrat businessman.

Mr Enrique Fernandez (scion of the late Central Bank governor, Jose "Jobo" Fernandez) was asked why he had been sitting on documents of Fernandez's company for almost two years. Well, the flowers in Atienza's signature gaudy polo shirts could have just wilted and died with the steam that blew out of the former lord mayor of Manila's ears.

He apparently tried to pass the buck to one of his minions. In this case, the poor sap turned out to be Mines and Geosciences Bureau Horacio Ramos who tried to reason that Fernandez's company's paeprs were still with the Mining Adjudication Board. But Fernandez, in a brilliant display of bureaucratic savviness, had all the documents, including ones with the obscure document tracking bar codes employed by government offices to track papers that are being sat-on by government officials. Lo and behold! The DENR document tracking system was apparently good enough to show that the papers in question have indeed been languishing in the offices of the cabinet secretary—he with the flamboyantly colorful shirts.

Atienza scurried off in a huff to his office—perhaps to hide among the papers he had built up in there for the purpose.

Meanwhile, poor Minies director Ramos had to placate Fernandez and promised to personally deal with his problem in exchange for him not engaging members of media in a discussion which the latter seems to be avidly seeking.

Fernandez made it clear that while it would be nice of the DENR finally got around to approving his company's paperwork, it would have been equally acceptable if the same papers were disapproved provided that the decision to approve or otherwise is given ad acted upon with dispatch within the standards of the Philippine Civil Servce which is about 120 days. Perhaps Secretary Atienza was using Mars days.