Of course, it’s been let known by some sectors in the golfing community that Alvarez is not worthy of becoming Customs commissioner because he was suspended for cheating at this year’s annual centerpiece Mango Tee golf tournament of the exclusive Alabang Country Club, where Alvarez is a member. One golfer-senator, in fact, has axiomatically declared that if Alvarez cheats at golf, then he will cheat at Customs.
But, in golfing parlance, perhaps Alvarez should be allowed to hit the equivalent of a provisional ball, something that the rules of the game allow when there is a suspicion that the first ball one has hit has gone astray. And then, if he messes up again, we can all decide to penalize him by bundling him out of office posthaste.
Alvarez’s golfing infractions are certainly not unknown to the authority that appointed him. The Customs chief himself has admitted that the incident at Alabang came up during the deliberations concerning his nomination to the post—but that President Noynoy Aquino gave him the job anyway.
Indeed, it seems clear that the President and his advisers have deemed that Alvarez’s golf gaffe did not detract from his ability to collect taxes and duties on imported goods in favor of the government. And because Alvarez has been assigned to head an agency where cheating is not, to be kind, entirely a foreign concept, one has to admire the intended or unintentional irony that surrounds this particular appointment.
On the other hand, Alvarez must be the first to realize that his actions on the golf course have very little to do with the fact that he must perform as expected if he intends to stay long in his job. And that, last we checked, Customs is still expected to collected taxes and duties in the amount of P280 billion this year, whether or not Alvarez touches a golf club again for the rest of his life.
Making that number or surpassing it in terms of collections is the only sure test of Alvarez’s ability as a suitable Customs chief— not the number on any golf scorecard that he signs. And if Alvarez knows what’s good for him and the entire government that is relying on him to hit his collection target, he will move on from what happened in Alabang and devote all his efforts to reaching the goal that has been put before him.
Like the Aquino administration itself, perhaps we should allow Alvarez the opportunity to start afresh and do all he can to get the job done. If we cannot give the new administration the opportunity to show us what it can do, then we might as well have never ended the sniping and partisanship that marked the last election campaign.
Besides, all of us have a stake in seeing this administration succeed, because that will benefit the entire country. And if the Customs bureau gets to shake off its oft-deserved reputation as a hotbed of corruption during the current administration, then that will be a most welcome side effect, as well.
Needless to say, Alvarez should realize that because of what happened in Alabang, he will probably have to work harder than any previous Customs chief to make his collection target. As head of one of the top three revenue-generating agencies in an administration that has had to revise its deficit targets upward in anticipation of flagging income, Alvarez also shoulders the additional burden of helping the Aquino government implement its priority projects without sinking the country deeper into debt.
This is not, after all, some golf game where mere pride and a bunch of trophies are at stake. For the government and the citizenry, Alvarez’s performance at Customs could spell the difference between helping uplift the nation and business as usual for the smugglers and their corrupt co-conspirators inside the bureau.
So Alvarez is in a unique position to breathe life into Aquino’s mantra of no poverty and no corruption. And if he fails to do his job, he will be able to spend the rest of his life explaining how he is not a cheat—and an incompetent one, at that —when he retires to the golf course after his brief, unremarkable stint as Customs commissioner.
* * *
Here’s a quick way for Alvarez to prove how serious he is about collecting revenues for the government at the Customs bureau: he can look into the reported rampant smuggling into the country of Turkish flour.
A detailed report prepared for the bureau recently estimated that smugglers of cheap, low-nutrient Turkish flour has caused the government to lose P51 million in import duties and taxes in the first five months of this year alone. And the foregone revenues were reportedly due to the operations of only eight importing companies that brought in the flour.
According to the report, which Alvarez can very easily access, two of the eight companies used the Manila International Container Port as point of entry while a third used both the MICP and the Port of Manila. The operations of the first company caused the government to lose at least P13.8 million when it imported 8,592 metric tons of the product but declared only 5,389 tons, while the second imported 7,086 MT while declaring only 4,961, thus evading the payment of P6.9 million.
The third importer supposedly brought in 10,488 MT of Turkish flour but undervalued the shipment by 23.3 percent to avoid paying P6.9 million which should have been collected by the Customs bureau. The imported flour was valued at $24.77 per ton when the reference value of the product by Customs is $300 per MT.
While the report details the alleged smuggling and undervaluation of Turkish flour during the previous Arroyo administration, Alvarez now has the responsibility to prove that this irregularity will not continue under the new administration. And a new report concerning Turkish flour smuggling under the Aquino administration, we heard, is already being prepared.
Alvarez can make sure that the new report will not show that it’s business as usual for the flour smugglers. And that his own promise for influence-peddlers at the ports is not just empty talk from someone who really cannot do the job he was contracted to perform.
Get to work, Commissioner. You were selected for the job despite supposed serious questions about your honesty and integrity on the golf course—now it’s time to prove the doubters wrong in the real world, where how you perform really matters.
-Jojo Robles
Source: http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideOpinion.htm?f=2010/july/21/jojorobles.isx&d=2010/july/21
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