Get a government job and see the world. And then get fired.
So, Marcial Amaro, administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority, is the third top government official sacked by President Rodrigo Duterte for excessive foreign travel. The peripatetic Amaro reportedly went abroad 24 times in 18 months in office, including on 21 foreign trips at government’s expense.
The first two officials bitten by the travel bug and who were also removed were Dangerous Drugs Board Chairman Dionisio Santiago and Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor chief Terry Ridon.
In Santiago’s case, Malacañang gave too much traveling as the reason for removing the DDB head, even if it was widely reported that he was forced to quit for publicly disagreeing with Duterte on how to implement the president’s war on illegal drugs. And Ridon was sent packing together with all his commissioners, for the same offense.
Amaro was a private shipping company executive when Duterte tapped him for the Marina post in August 2016. He has worked all his life in the merchant marine and the shipping industry and was named Most Outstanding Seafarer of the Year in 2003.
But Amaro has been accused of being an “absentee administrator” by various seafarer’s organizations and Marina employees because of his jones for travel. Last month, the agency’s employees wrote to Duterte to complain about Amaro’s absenteeism.
“Mr. Amaro is a disgrace to Marina and it does not deserve an administrator with this jet-setting lifestyle,” the agency’s employees wrote last December 21. “We humbly pray and ask that he be replaced immediately lest he… cause more harm and damage to our beloved institution.”
The response of Malacañang was swift. But it was not as if Amaro was not given a chance to explain his frequent travels.
A spokesman for Amaro told a newspaper reporter right before the end of the year that both Malacañang and the Department of Transportation, which oversees Marina, told Amaro about the calls for his removal. Amaro was told to prepare a statement explaining why he needed to travel so much, which the spokesman said his boss really needed to do.
“There are a lot of important international meetings to attend to and he is not only representing seafarers but the country, like [in] the meeting with IMO [International Maritime Organization],” his spokesman said. Amaro also promised to resign if it was proven that his trips were actually junkets on the taxpayer’s dime.
Well, it seems that Duterte found proof that Amaro was a world-class junketeer. And now Amaro is out of a job.
Those who still need proof that Duterte is serious about cracking down on jet-setting officials should look no further. Or they can just wait until the next travel-happy government executive is fired.
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Speaking of removing government officials, I’ve been told that the suspension by the Office of the Ombudsman of four out of five commissioners of the Energy Regulatory Commission isn’t as simple as it’s been made out to be. A prominent but controversial holdover in the Ombudsman’s office who wrote the suspension order supposedly just capitalized on Duterte’s warnings for the ERC to shape up to push an agenda that conveniently favored a big Yellow power industry player, I’ve been told.
The Ombudsman suspended ERC Commissioners Alfredo Non, Gloria Victoria Yap-Taruc, Josefina Patricia Asirit and Geronima Sta. Ana for a year without pay for allegedly favoring electric power distributor Manila Electric Co. and an affiliate company. The 2016 exemption from a required selection process intended to make the cost of Power Supply Agreements more reasonable was cited by Deputy Overall Ombudsman Arthur Carandang as the reason for the mass suspension, which left only newly-appointed Chairman Agnes Devanadera on board.
If Carandang’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was personally appointed second-in-command of the anti-corruption agency by then President Noynoy Aquino in 2013 upon the request of Aquino’s controversial propagandist, former broadcaster Ramon “Ricky” Carandang, his cousin. This same Carandang disclosed last August that Duterte and members of his family amassed billions of pesos that were stashed in local banks, giving credence to earlier allegations made by presidential critic Senator Antonio Trillanes.
But why would an Aquino appointee suspend officials whom Duterte himself had threatened to fire, after the President dismissed the commission’s chairman, Jose Vicente Salazar, for grave misconduct? Did Carandang suddenly get religion and is now a Duterte Diehard Supporter?
Some people don’t believe so. They say that Carandang is only using the President’s anger at the ERC as a cover in order to go after the enemies on the commission of a major industry player that has long supported the Aquino family.
The mass suspension of the four commissioners, according to these observers, also has the salutary effect (for the Yellow industry player) of effectively preventing the ERC from acting as a regulator of the power sector, because it will take time to find new officials to take their place. Neat, huh?