Authority sans accountability

SO WHO is this “Architect Laquindanum,” and why is his name uttered but in guarded whispers at the Provincial Engineer’s Office?
That came to the fore at Monday’s sangguniang panlalawigan en banc committee hearing on the status of projects being implemented under the 20 percent development fund for 2007.
It was with pained reluctance, and only after a second jab of intense questioning from Vice Governor Yeng Guiao, that the acting provincial engineer breathed out almost inaudibly “Architect Laquindanum” as the one who provided him with the compact discs where written the text and imprinted the photograph of the governor, and ordered him that these be given to contractors for printing and posting on project sites.
So who is this “Architect Laquindanum” and why did he wield so much power over the PEO? Yeng wanted to know.
“What I know is that he is with the Office of the Governor,” the acting provincial engineer Olimpio Pangan said, acting more frightened than engineer.
Good God, what has happened to the provincial government?
Here is an unknown, unverified character who simply goes by the moniker “Architect Laquindanum” able to command the PEO at whim on the strength of an unwritten affiliation, nay, a simple oral reference to the Office of the Governor!
No one at the PEO mustered enough brains, much less balls, to question the authority of this “Architect Laquindanum” to issue orders?
What has become of the PEO? A kennel of mangy mongrels terrified to submission, to go fetch, to heel, and to stay at the command of an unknown master? Go, Bantay, go. Jump, Tagpi, jump. Good job, Olympio, here’s a morsel for you. Sickening.
Asked by Yeng, one Attorney Joseph Quiambao of the provincial legal office said all he knew of “Architect Laquindanum” was that “he is with the Governor’s Office.” No titles, no position, no assignment, no nothing. There is an apparent case of usurpation here.
Could “Architect Laquindanum” be one of those consultants that periodically come out of the woodwork and as regularly worm themselves back in since the assumption to office of the Reverend Governor? We have seen this happening at the still-as-yet-SP-unsanctioned provincial information office. And at the quarry-handling Balas office too.
Can’t be, Board Member Tars Halili, chief of the SP human resources committee said. “We did not approve any position of consultancy lately.”
So who is this “Architect Laquindanum” who – per the fear factor he has instilled at the PEO – struts around like a field marshal of the governor?
No plantilla position, no appointment of any kind appearing so far, no accountability thus, but with all that authority?
Governor Eddie T. Panlilio, don’t tell us this is your kind of good governance and transparency.
Authority without accountability is plain and simple tyranny.
Come to think of it now, is this “Architect Laquindanum” one and the same character as that Laquindanum who, at the time of the gubernatorial campaign last year, called the local media “bayaran” -- paid hacks, to you our foreign readers – and “bereft of moral bearings”?
We strongly enjoin Yeng and the SP to really, really pull the mask out of this character. He deserves no place in government. Not even as a street sweeper. Our apologies to street sweepers.