re deeply saddened by the sudden demise of our senior reporter and close friend, Christine Herrera.
Two weeks ago, she sent me a text message saying that she would “rarampa muna” in Bangkok. She would buy stuff to sell in some Christmas bazaars together with some friends. She would be back by the 22nd, she said, and would I be in Manila by then, and give her and some other journalist friends a blow-out?
Then last Sunday afternoon, our publisher sent me the shocking message about Christine suddenly writing 30 in Bangkok.
She will be sorely missed. My profound condolences to Lito Herrera and their daughters Nikki and Abbey, and the infant Malcolm Mason whom Lola Christine doted upon.
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Last Sept. 28, President Duterte issued E.O. 44 ordering the Philippine Postal Corp. and the Bureau of Treasury to transfer their shares in the Postal Savings Bank to Land Bank of the Philippines at zero value.
This effectively dissolved the Postal Savings Bank which started out as a thrift bank to encourage Filipinos to save, utilising the network of post offices all over the country at a time when banks were mostly present only in Metro Manila and a few large cities. PSB became insolvent during the Marcos administration, with private savings bank starting to modernize and expand, such that it was mothballed. Given its financial condition, it made no sense to me as Postmaster-General in President Cory’s time to revive it. I instead launched the move to convert the Bureau of Posts into a GOCC. The PostalBank was eventually revived during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo through a capital infusion.
But its operations remained unsustainable. At one time, its president, Rolando Macasaet proposed that it be converted into a bank for OFWs, using the postal system which is part of the Universal Postal Union, as conduit for overseas workers’ remittances to their families here, but then the succeeding PNoy administration and its newly-appointed officials did not act on Macasaet’s proposal.
Serendipitously, Rolly Macasaet, who hails from Zamboanga City, and I found ourselves together in the movement to field Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City for the presidential race of 2016. I volunteered in late December 2014, talked to the mayor on Jan. 7, 2015, while Rolly, who is an executive of the giant San Miguel conglomerate, joined us in late February of 2015.
Rolly and I had the same concerns about OFWs. Not only was the postal bank a good remittance conduit. We were more worried about how OFW earnings were being frittered away in basically dead investments, such as a concrete house standing in the middle of nowhere in some barrio. Not really bad, but basically a “dead” investment. Or the ubiquitous jeepney, with a retired OFW still driving the contraption, or for those with less savings, the other ubiquitous contraption—a tricycle. Or a sari-sari store with hardly enough prospects for profitable operations.
Worse, so many of our overseas Filipino workers were being conned by Ponzi schemes hatched by the greedy and unscrupulous quick-buck artists feeding on get-rich-quick dreams of suffering countrymen.
So in one of those nights when we were with our then unconvinced presidential candidate, Rodrigo Duterte, when very few people were “crazy” enough to believe in his winning possibilities (yes, that is how some wizened political “analysts” dismissed us), we proposed converting the moribund postal bank into an OFW financial vehicle. It was eventually incorporated into our “Tapang at Malasakit—Tunay na Pagbabago” platform for the Duterte-Cayetano tandem, put together by us and Vivencio “Vince” Dizon, now BCDA president, now Speaker Bebot Alvarez, now Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez and his brother Paul Dominguez, now Executive Secretary Bingbong Medialdea, now SolGen Joe Calida, now Pagcor chairman Didi Domingo, now Pagcor president Fred Lim, now GSIS CEO Clint Aranas, now Philippine Postal Corp. chairman Norman Fulgencio, in a launching event hosted by now Presidential Assistant for Visayas, Michael Lloyd Dino.
A last minute “insertion,” I recall, was the creation of a Department of History and Culture, a “dream” of Vince Dizon, Rolly Macasaet, Atty. Chi Famador, then in the Senate staff of Senator Alan, plus Jimmy Bondoc and his “Takbo” artists’ group and this writer (and which I have proposed in this space before), which admittedly was not pre-cleared with our candidate.
When Sonny Dominguez became secretary of Finance, he immediately operationalized the Duterte-Cayetano promise to our OFWs. And because the existing Postal Bank was financially in extremis, he decided to piggyback the promise upon the resource-rich Land Bank of the Philippines.
With a new CEO, Alex Buenaventura at the helm of LandBank, an entire year of preparatory groundwork was done, which included numerous consultations with DoLE Secretary Bebot Bello and his staff.
One month before the self-imposed deadline, the President made true a campaign promise to our OFW’s, who supported him immensely in the last elections. They were believers of the meaningful change that he personified, such that the overseas vote for Duterte was virtually unanimous in 2016.
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Last Oct. 7, MECO signed a memorandum of agreement with the National Kaohsiung Maritime University in Taiwan which provided firstly, that a training module would be crafted for our Taiwan OFWs to get training in mariculture and related skills, and secondly, devising a scholarship program for our OFW’s in Taiwan along such fields.
This is in line with our advocacy of providing our OFWs better, more economically-productive and potentially profitable micro-business ventures other than the ubiquitous jeepney, tricycle and sari-sari tindahan, or the “just-there” concrete bungalow in the middle of a rice-field.
It is in line with Duterte’s promise to “make our lives more comfortable” by the end of his term.
Beginnings. The promise of meaningful change.