On Oca being sacked

Churchill Aguilar

BY principle, I am of course against any form of corruption. I have been advocating good governance since I started engaging with local governments in my consultancy and I have had conscious efforts in cutting my ties with politicians whom I have found to be very corrupt and who just had no heart for the poor–those who are beyond help.

But such is absolutely not the case with Oca Moreno. You see, I have worked with him as a consultant mid last year for just a couple of months and while he may not have fully seen the gravity and the seriousness of what I do in his bureaucracy, I still found him very sincere in forging a vibrant Cagayan de Oro. He always tries to find balance in urban development and social services. I had been a strong critic of some of his programs but so far, in all his major decisions, he always put into serious considerations the poor and the marginalized, something I greatly admired.

Does that give Oca the excuse to be corrupt? Of course not, but I think the real issue is not much about anomalous transactions rather simply utter incompetence of the people surrounding him. Firstly, if we look at the cases of his dismissal, it all involves procedures and technicalities. Something that could have easily been avoided and even remedied if his people are not too busy trying to get their shares of the pie and are at least familiar with the do’s and don’ts of government transactions. As a governor or mayor, you simply can’t see everything that happens and so you rely on your leaders. And if you have the wrong people surrounding you, it gets you in big trouble such as this case.

Secondly, the case at hand transpired while he was still our governor, and yet all these years none from his team of experts was able to effectively mediate that it had to reach to a dismissal order. It would seem that from the long list of allies that he had and he has, no one is really serious enough to protect his back. If we look at the figures paid for the lease of the heavy equipment, they are even very much reasonable–not bloated at all unlike those of “trapo” transactions. In our system where even Napoles may have a chance of getting away with her graft cases, a simple error could have been corrected way earlier if he was surrounded by competent people who genuinely shares his vision.

Thirdly, I am in a way affected by this dismissal order because amid all those who surround him now it seems like he is actually alone in this battle and in consequence it would also be like the Cagayanons were also robbed of a brilliant leader who was already gaining momentum in genuinely changing our quality of life. And I am saying this as a Cagayanon who was not even appreciated by the guy and who will surely not gain anything from this at all.

Niagi man gud ko ug kapobrehon. Para sa mga pobre, naa na gyud unta kitay kaabag sa atong pagpakigbisog kada adlaw pero mawala tungod lang sa mga pulpul nga tao nga ga sige pa sipsip, ga lumba ug pangwarta pero walay gaka buhat.

This should be a lesson to all leaders, i.e., to invest on real experts and competent people who will not lead them to trouble (protect their back) and who can materialize their desired outputs and outcomes.

If Mayor Oca would wan’t to know who among his people now are really genuine in serving Cagayanons, he simply has to ask each department head and each consultant: What have you achieved this month? I bet their answers would be a long list of activities (not success indicators) they have conducted and perhaps (actually I am certain) only three can confidently report real, tangible and measurable outcomes that have really been felt by Cagayanons.

If he would ask the same to all his elected allies in the legislative department, they would not understand the question.