Man and mouse

AS A man must, so SBMA Administrator Armand Arreza did: face his demons, or those demonizing him, squarely.
Unflinching in his conviction that he has been wronged by the Aquino administration the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority honcho damned the lie to the claim that he received a pay of P26.9 million in 2009.
“Unfair, misleading” was how Arreza called reports naming him as the highest paid government official in the whole Philippines. For the record, the President himself receives only a gross monthly pay of P95,000 which amounts to P1.14 million annually.
By documentary evidence, Arreza presented at a press conference his pay slip showing P95,449 as his monthly take-home pay out of his gross income of P130,888. And an entitlement to a representation allowance of P 8,700.
“My salary is the same as my predecessors’ rate. I have not added a single centavo to what they have been receiving since 2000 — during the time of former SBMA chairman and administrator Felicito Payumo," Arreza stressed, and for effect: “I have not made myself rich. The media reports were erroneous as they incorporated SBMA operational funds with my personal income.”
The operational funds included the P15-million intelligence fund, which – Arreza took pains in explaining – was determined by the Office of the President, and the extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses last year which he estimated at P18 million to P19 million.
Of the P15-million intelligence fund, P10 million goes to the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG) based in the Subic Freeport, while the remaining P5 million is divided between his and SBMA Chairman Feliciano Salonga’s offices.
“The P2.5-million intelligence fund appropriated to my office goes straight to the SBMA Law Enforcement Department and the Intelligence and Investigation Office,” Arreza said. “This set-up has been in place since 2004. We have not added to this fund, and, in fact, the amount has remained the same until now.”
The funds for extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses, Arreza explained, are used for advertising and promotions, including sponsorship of big events at Subic like the last Philippine Advertising Congress.
Said Arreza: “SBMA has a mandate to boost investments in the free port, and to achieve that, we have to spend on promotions. We also use the extraordinary and miscellaneous funds to help neighboring communities during calamities, like when the SBMA conducted relief and rescue operations after the devastation wrought by Typhoon Ondoy.”
“These operational expenditures of the SBMA do not in any way form part of my compensation as administrator and chief executive officer,” he sstressed.
No, Arreza emphasized, he does not receive any compensation as member of the SBMA Board of Directors, nor as director of the SBMA subsidiary Freeport Service Corporation. Not simply in compliance with but in strongly adhering to the law against double compensation.
As a man must, and as Arreza did, CDC President-CEO Benigno Ricafort did not.
Placed in the same predicament as Arreza – overblown salaries and scandalous perks of office – the Clark Development Corp. top man took refuge under his wife’s skirt instead of facing the issue squarely.
“…Your news item got me into trouble with my wife as she asked me where I kept the other funds!” So was Ricafort quoted in an e-mail to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Adding that his wife “understood my situation and sympathized with me.”
So Ricafort went on denying the report that he got P14.506 million in 2009, saying that he received “less than P3 million a year” in salary and allowances; that his monthly take-home pay was P117,600 from a gross of P173,000.
On the report that he also received P10 million in extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses and P497,441 in “other expenses,” Ricafort explained that 1) the “non-compensatory amount” allotted under his name was “pre-approved” by the CDC board of directors for expenses like promotions, advertisements and public-client relations; and 2) these expenses “cannot be predicted with strict accuracy” and cannot be capped and restricted “as it may impede corporate initiatives for growth and expansion.” So reported the Inquirer.
Rationalized Ricafort: “Since the fund usage is for unpredicted and extraordinary items, it is entrusted under the authority and accountability of the president and CEO, not for his personal use, but for purposes left to his judgment and his executive officers, as this may occur and cannot await the special allotment by the board … that meets [only] twice a month.”
In the absence of documentary evidence proffered before the press to back his claim, Ricafort’s ululations are no different from the pathetic squeaks of a trapped mouse.
Pity.