Apart from making mining and forestry more sustainable, Gina Lopez’ job as a secretary also includes being a judicious boss to both the personnel she inherited and the persons she brought in.
Filling the department with persons you trust matters, but making sure you are also able to harness the skills and idealism of the rank and file staff, the career officials, the resident experts trained abroad is equally important to boosting the morale of the rank and file.
There are many of them who have been marginalized by their more corrupt and unscrupolous colleagues.
Making all of them accountable for integrity and performance is vital to reforming the bureaucracy many like to call corrupt.
Moreover, how the career personnel are inspired to perform beter, if not beyond duty’s call is a real reform legacy in any agency.
However, sources within the DENR lament her treatment of them, and her tendency to rely more on her consultants who may have the right intentions, but not the right accountabilities and skill sets.
Many of these consultants reportedly also have their pet advocacies and stand accused of simply expanding their networks on official DENR time rather than getting their jobs done.
This discontent is illustrated in the infamous black friday incident where DENR staff wore black to protest sone policies they call unfair .(http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/unjust-firings-at-denr-demoralize-employees/)
Third, Gina Lopez will be the first member of the cabinet to publicly curse at members of the mainstream media. Calling that Business World reporter a f+++ing employee was uncalled for, revealing a tendency to evade answering tough questions.
Her boss may curse, but he has his reasons, many of which may actually on point or justified when examined closely- and often directed at the issue behind the question as a means of emphasis. In Gina Lopez’s case, it was an angry retort at the reporter’s questions which clearly were not mean to harass.She of course, apologized “deeply”(http://m.philstar.com/782974/show/72f4cccfefe50178719d74ed74e28412)
Fourth, Gina could have shed light on a lot of illegal mining going on under the DENRs nose. Being from Davao, we need not look far. In nearby provinces we hear the names Masara, Maragusan, Panganason, Diwalwal- all areas known for illegal gold and copper mining.
Was any long term action against them launched? Despite her bravado i never recalled her using it against widespread illegal mining that has destroyed the Pantukan river and emptied its waste into the Davao gulf, and repoetedly killed hundreds trapped in tunnels a few years back. She only concentrated on the legal miners- those she could control since as DENR Secretary, she was the official managing their contracts and MPSAs.
Dealing with this very old recurrent issue could have left a positive legacy for her and the DENR.
Doubtless, Gina’s outcome is a lesson to be learned for all who want to push radical reforms. Remember former DAR Secretary- designate Florencio Abad who was also rejected by the same commission on Appointments for his supposedly anti-landlord policies favoring agrarian reform.
Of course Abad’s political fortunes (and some say his integrity) may have gone south twenty years after those tumultuous months in 1988, but i digress.
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