Politicians and their promises

Last year saw politicians making outrageous promises and eventually winning the elections they were contesting. PDutz did a lot of that and the champion is Donald Trump. Should we demand that politicians keep their promises?

I guess it depends. Winning an election is different from running a country. All is fair in love, war and political battles. But running the country afterwards demands a greater sense of responsibility and statesmanship. We should be happy if some promises recklessly made in the heat of a campaign are broken.

Some Cabinet members of Erap have told me that while he was president, Erap was prone to promise political supporters a lot of things during their midnight happy hours. But after the responsible Cabinet member explains to him why the promises cannot be delivered for good governance sake, Erap always listened to good advice.

PDutz made a lot of promises during the campaign that involve more complicated policy making than Dutz the candidate realized. The total ban on contractualization is one and the SSS pension raise is another. On both promises, PDutz listened to his Cabinet members and has agreed to modify the position he has taken as a candidate.

Should we condemn PDutz for failing to live up to the promises he has made as a candidate? I don’t think so. In fact, he ought to be commended for being brave enough to admit he was more complex than he realized as a candidate. Now that he is president, he has a responsibility to do the right thing… not necessarily the popular thing.

PDutz is fast learning that being president is a lot more complicated than being mayor. A nation of over 100 million people is not as easily governed and the president must constantly balance competing interests.

Indeed, I admire PDutz for seeing the total picture on the SSS pension issue. As a senior citizen, I could use the additional amount, but at the expense of future pensioners. Shortening the life of the pension fund to keep a political promise is irresponsible.

It is the same situation on contractualization. It is not simply having some large retailers lay off workers every five months to avoid paying benefits due regular employees. Some businesses will be seriously disrupted by a simplistic view of the issue and that will lead to job losses.

In both these issues, compromises will have to be made. The administration’s approach on contractualization must protect the rights of workers without causing loss of jobs. In the pension issue, they must find a way to raise pensions without endangering the life expectancy of the fund. It is also unfair to use taxes paid by non members to benefit SSS members.

The other big issue requiring some hard thinking on the part of PDutz is the proposal of former president Gloria Arroyo to relieve the BSP Governor of his obligation to supervise AMLC. PDutz was apparently given a wrong appreciation of how AMLC does its job. He was not told about tough limitations the law has imposed on how and when AMLC can release information even to the justice department.

Thus, PDutz thinks AMLC was less than cooperative with the DOJ in gathering evidence against Sen. Leila de Lima and those suspected of being drug lords. He did not realize that AMLC procedures are strictly constrained by law.

That is why the BSP Governor has a standing proposal to give AMLC more teeth. But politicians in Congress don’t like that for the obvious reason that they have financial secrets to protect.

Politicizing AMLC by removing BSP supervision is a bad idea that may even get us in the international financial blacklist. That will have grave consequences for OFWs and their remittances. I am sure, if things are explained to PDutz, he will see the situation in the proper light.

Teddyboy Locsin, recently appointed by PDutz to be our ambassador to the United Nations, explained it best in his regular opinion piece on ANC, why AMLC should remain with the BSP Governor at its helm.

Locsin explains: “… one president after another refused to give an adequate budget to the AMLC. Because of which, we faced sanctions despite having enacted the most sophisticated anti-money laundering law in the world. So said a US Treasury official who was here to advise and threaten us.

“So the Central Bank had to finance the AMLC with cash advances. One president after another wanted to keep the AMLC weak and unable to check her or his suspicious transactions—or use the AMLC for their private vendettas.

“The CB governor is also the chair because the CB governor is vetted for impartiality, intelligence, learning in an erudite discipline, and integrity—such as no other official in the land is vetted; certainly more than a merely elected one. Therefore, only one such as he can be trusted to chair it.

“The idea of taking out the CB governor and substituting him with a lackey of the administration staggers the imagination. It will destroy all faith and confidence in our financial system here and abroad. A system that passed with flying colors three global financial crises already will be, as it should be, under suspicion.

“It is not the CB governor who orders—but the AntiMoney Laundering Council that initiates and investigates possible money laundering. This is to make sure that no mere agent of the AMLC does it on his own initiative for purposes of blackmailing bank depositors.

“It is also to ensure that AMLC is not politicized. We who wrote the law made sure that only members of the Central Bank who have served it for five years straight can serve in the AMLC. This was precisely to exclude political scum from, say, the Department of Justice like one then beholden to GMA. We believed that only a five-year stint in the humdrum and rigorous work of central banking can develop the circumspection and the knowledge to examine bank transactions—and shut up about it…”

I share the view of Teddyboy that we should not shake one of the most solid central banks in the world— run the most ably of any central bank today. He warns us of “the prospect of legislative amendments that may weaken its independence, water down its professionalism, and erode its integrity, thereby paving the way for the Central Bank to become somebody’s private bank.”

I think it is a good thing that PDutz has appointed professional and independent thinking Cabinet members like those in the economic cluster. And then, there is Teddyboy Locsin who isn’t afraid to publicly explain a sensitive issue to help the President get the right perspective on it.

The more partisan folks will think I am indulging in wishful thinking. But I am hopeful PDutz will time and again show his sense of responsibility, even if doing so will make it seem like he is reneging on political promises.

I will be more worried if our President feels compelled to keep promises made during the campaign that he has been subsequently told is simply bad policy for the head of state to make.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail. com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.