OUR UNSOLVABLE SMUGGLING PROBLEM

I sympathize with Bureau of Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon as he humbly, yet kind of desperately, responded (Inquirer, 11/15/2012) to Rigoberto Tiglao's column just the day before,  highlighting the bureau's poor performance as a result of rampant smuggling under the present administration.  But in the same token, I must also admire Biazon's  truthfulness and courage as he objectively reacted to Tiglao's deeply pugnacious though amply convincing assertions.  Methinksthat was a gallant feat of Biazon, one never before exhibited by any other Cabinet ministers, past and present, very much less by his predecessor in the bureau whose performance had been also way below par.

Those of us who have read the full text of Biazon's rather lengthy rejoinder to Tiglao will readily admit that, except for the former curtly disputing the latter's claim that smuggling in this country is at its worst under the present political leadership -- a denial that is of course only to be expected lest he himself admits his days in the bureau are really numbered -- the good Commissioner has never even attempted to refute the smuggling-related statistical data presented by Tiglao. Truly most damning amongst these statistics are the comparative values of smuggling in these parts during the incumbencies of Estrada, Arroyo and Aquno, to wit, in billions: $3.1, $3.8 and $19.6, respectively.  In all fairness, I must admit that sometimes I also personally tend to doubt some of Tiglao's generally horrendous anti-PNoy/pro-Glora trades in his columns.  I am afraid, though,  that these figures, unless proven false -- which, truth to tell, Biazon, had ostensibly chosen not to challenge, anyway -- are amply reliable and should provide, at the very least, a source of concern to all right-thinking Filipinos. Instead, Biazon laments that close to 50% of his bureau's operations are still being done manually, and so their apparent work-in-progress solution to the rampant smuggling that besets them in practically all ports of entry is to computerize such services -- well, as if to say, it is this lack of automation that is the root cause of smuggling.  Methinks this presumption simply defies logic.  Why do I say that?  Ah, for the very simple reason that if automation of the operating services in the Customs bureau is just about 50% at present, then it had to be very much less under Arroyo's and Estrada's times.  But, then, why was smuggling remarkably low under Estrada's watch, just a little bit higher under Arroyo's, and extremely high under PNoy's administration?

As I earlier said, I truly commiserate with Commissioner Biazon's rather unfortunate situation as far as his department's performance is concerned, which most probably must be the reason why he just kept silent when he was suddenly excluded from Pinoy's final list of senatorial candidates for next year's election (he was among those earlier mentioned, wasn't he?).   But I would have liked that he explained the matter relatively more convincingly, rather than in a manner obviously too insulting to people's plain common sense.  In reacting to Tiglao, he also kept repeating such over-used expressions as: "it is not true that we are not doing anything about smuggling," or "we have been trying our best to improve the BOC management," and so on and so forth.  Such words of hope and self-reassurances have all been voiced out by his predecessors in the bureau and to no avail,  to the extent that they have now grown to be a mouthful of vain and futile motherhood statements.  I am sure President Aquino expects very much more than that.  Rampant smuggling has been with us nearly since immemorial; yet it seems to be getting worse.  At least for once, given PNoy's widely acclaimed though, methinks, meaningless "straight road to governance, "the people are expecting to hear relatively more concrete action plans to curb smuggling in our midst and times.  In fact,  Biazon and his tribes in the Bureau are even luckier that President Aquno, whether rightly or wrongly, would rather want his unsatisfactorily performing Cabinet secretaries to realize their failures and voluntarily quit their posts than bluntly tell them to resign.

Incidentally, I am sure the Palace has its own views on this issue.   And so, I am raring to hear how presidential spokesman and shock absorber, Edwin Lacierda, would react to it in due course. .