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THE
timing has become the story—or at least, that’s how it
has unfolded—in the confirmation by Palace officials
that top-class accountant Corazon de la Paz-Bernardo is
leaving the Social Security System (SSS) this month, and
will be replaced by controversial Senate witness Romulo
Neri, touted by colleagues to have extensive knowledge
in the capital markets.
The de
la Paz-Bernardo departure becomes noteworthy because,
not only are we letting go of a competent, intelligent
person of integrity, not to mention one respected by
peers globally (the first Asian to head the
Switzerland-based International Social Security
Association), the point is, she is being replaced by
someone controversial; and at a curious period in the
life of the country’s two top pension funds, the SSS and
its counterpart, the Government Service Insurance System
(GSIS).
Assuming
without conceding two things—that 1) Mrs. Bernardo
sincerely wanted to, in the words of her June 18
resignation letter, have more time for her family
(having remarried last year) and attend to health
problems; and 2) Mr. Neri is intellectually prepared for
the job with his knowledge in capital markets—the
transition still has raised questions because of
persistent talk that some people in the administration
have long wanted to dip their hands into the SSS funds,
or use them for purposes that, to the ever-professional
Bernardo, were a no-no. It didn’t help that her
counterpart in the GSIS, Winston Garcia, has been seen
as no more than an administration proxy in a megawar
with the Lopezes of Meralco, cloaking himself in the
consumer champion’s mantle while, curiously, allowing
his main constituency, the more than 1 million state
workers, to lose in terms of the fast-declining value of
their shareholdings as this take-no-prisoners type of
battle rages. In fact, on Tuesday, he was at it again,
declaring at a public forum his intent to pursue his
war, this time over onerous contracts with independent
power producers.
The
merits of Garcia’s advocacy aside, the transition at the
SSS deserves attention because this isn’t the first time
that workers have justifiably felt some paranoia that
someone with sticky fingers among the powers that be
wants to dip into their pension funds. Fortunately,
during the long years of the Marcos regime, the SSS
stayed intact, not for any lack of trying from Imelda’s
cronies, but because the then-administrator, Gilberto
Teodoro Sr., was no pushover.
In the
end, therefore, it truly matters that whoever heads the
SSS is no pushover. Whatever her officially stated
reasons may be, people in the know swear that Ms. De la
Paz-Bernardo is leaving because she is no pushover.
On the
same night that newsrooms were scrambling to piece
together the SSS transition story, coincidentally, a
Palace announcement provided one angle: the new SSS
administrator will have a Cabinet rank because he will,
under Administrative Order 232, head a newly formed
cluster of “social-welfare agencies” brought together,
ostensibly, to afford the government a more coherent,
integrated approach to helping the poor cope with the
impact of the oil-food crises and related issues.
This
means Mr. Neri, who once upon a time was worshipped by
his Ateneo classmates when he testified at the Senate on
the national broadband network-ZTE deal, only to later
shut up, gets to sit at the Cabinet table once more, as
he did when he once headed the National Economic and
Development Authority. Is he being rewarded to make sure
he stays silent forever? Or to ensure that the SSS is
headed by someone perceived as more malleable than
Bernardo?
In the
new scheme that clusters the SSS and GSIS with
“social-welfare agencies” like the Department of Social
Welfare and Development (DSWD)—questionable in the sense
that the DSWD is funded by tax money precisely to help
the poor; the two trust funds are owned by the poor—so
many questions arise, and the cluster’s timing can only
aggravate the doubts raised in the SSS transition.
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