By Cong Corrales
MY column today features particular stories of two mayors. Both rule on opposite ends of Northern Mindanao but are similar in how they deal with their subordinates or those they perceive to be below their stations and the towns they rule have been touted as industrial hubs of the region.
Let’s start with the mayor of Iligan City who has been accused of manhandling a 59-year-old city hall worker. Based on a police blotter by the alleged victim, Norbel Romares claimed that Mayor Celso Regencia blamed him for the release of garbage leachate from the city’s Central Materials Recovery Facility.
In the blotter publicly posted on Facebook, Romares claimed that the fuming mayor punched his stomach and chest while he was gagged with masking tape. He added that the mayor also took out a pistol.
The next day after the news of the alleged manhandling came out, Regencia admitted to hurting Romares but that he merely “pinched” the ears of the one-year shy senior citizen.
Of course, all of these did not happen in a vacuum. To understand Regencia’s rage towards what he suspected Romares did, we must look back late last year. The mayor has been under stress because Iligan’s solid waste management has been under close scrutiny by the environment department. He was summoned to the department’s main office in Manila to explain. It was so stressful for the mayor that he took a leave of absence and went back to work only in mid-January, this year.
He said that prior to “pinching” Romares’s ears, the Environment Management Bureau called him to warn that Iligan could be slapped with a P200-thousand penalty for each day the garbage leachate polluted the Dodiongan Falls.
I understand why the mayor was fuming mad. Who would not be frustrated with this infraction after you personally had to go to Manila to explain the shortcomings of your city’s solid waste management system? Still, I don’t approve of what he did to his subordinate.
Let’s start with his suspicion that Romares was supposedly responsible for releasing the garbage leachate. Can’t the mayor launch an investigation on the incident, instead of zeroing in on Romares? Regencia said Romares should pay for the penalty and not city hall. Hasn’t Regencia heard of the principle of command responsibility?
Romares, by the way, is pushing to sue Regencia.
Now, let’s go to the other angry town mayor of Tagoloan. Mayor Gomer Sabio became an instant internet sensation in this part of the region when a three-minute and 49-second video went viral on Facebook last week.
In it, Sabio is shown berating Sta. Ana barangay worker Charito Sol. He scolded her in front of other barangay workers. Even Sol’s chairman, Elmo Ragandang, was not able to come to her rescue and just watched at the sidelines pathetically.
Sabio’s beef stems from Sol’s advice to a Sta. Ana family to seek town councilor Roger Achas and Vice Mayor Robinson Sabio so they could be allowed to bury their dead at the Sta. Ana public cemetery.
The mayor can be seen and heard on the video lashing out at Sol for “politicizing” a simple burial arrangement.
“Ayaw pamolitika kay di ka politiko,” Sabio yelled at Sol.
Sabio shouted at Sol that the cemetery is owned by the municipal government, thus his approval, as town mayor, would suffice. The mayor explained this with colorful expletives interspersed in between.
However, it is public knowledge that the town vice mayor and councilor are members of the Emano political dynasty’s Padayon Pilipino while Sabio is with the National Unity Party of the power couple former vice governor Julio Uy and Misamis Oriental 2nd District Rep. Juliette Uy. Sta. Ana’s chairman is a known political ally Padayon Pilipino. So, who is politicizing what now, mayor?
Although both town mayors had different reasons why they lashed out to their subordinates, they are similar in that they seem to have this idea that they “own” their subordinates.
According to behavioral expert Sean Webb, bosses who yell at their subordinates are most likely ignorant bosses.
He said there are two types of bosses who lashed out at their employees. First is the boss who has anger management issues. These are bosses who can’t process their anger and only knows to raise their voice and lash out at the person they feel are responsible for the anger they are feeling.
The other type of boss is what Webb calls the “calculated yeller.” This kind of boss lashes out to their workers to motivate them to “move out of the pain and into pleasure.” These bosses think that through public humiliation, their workers will work harder and do better in the future.
But on the other side of this equation, Webb said, the employees who have been lashed at is stressed and when this happens their brains release stress hormones. As a result, these hormones shut down the higher cognitive function of the workers’ brains.
“So as the boss stands there yelling, their employee gets dumber by the second whether they like it or not. 10-20 IQ points dumber. In addition, the immune system function diminishes, making it more likely to miss work. It also doesn’t exactly endear the employee to their boss, which can reduce motivation and engagement,” Webb said.
Aside from this antiquated type of leadership, it is apparent that there are chief executives in the country who emulate the wrong kind of leader. When you have a national leader who lashes out like a petulant child on live TV, you can be sure there will be these types of leaders you see at the local level. People who think that being a local chief executive is a birthright and that everybody must toe the line without a shadow of a doubt.
Ultimately, these incidents can be traced to the people who put these types of people in power. As humorist George Carlin once said: “If you have ignorant, selfish voters, you’ll have ignorant, selfish leaders.”
See you again in two years when we will be voting people to power. Pfft.
