MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL

 

Is it sugar shortage? Why?

Is it officials acting unlawfully? Why?

Is it incomplete staff work? Why?

And so on.

Looking into the sugar fiasco, I was in a process of putting to good use one of the tools I have kept in my corporate toolbox – the Kepner Tregoe method – when, all of a sudden, I got word that Vic Rodriguez had resigned as PBBM Executive Secretary.

(Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe founded and developed a rational working method in the 1960s known as the KT-method of problem-solving and decision-making.)

Though dry and trite, these twin idioms fit like gloves so well around the breaking news that I could not help myself using both all over again: Someone let the cat out of the bag and there is more to the cat than meets the eye.

Mon Tulfo spilled the cat, er, the beans in his Philstar prolific column, “Resigned?” dated Sept. 18, 2022:

“Rodriguez made so many boo-boos his position as the most powerful Cabinet official had become untenable.”

“I have never seen anyone cling to power like Vic. He actually had the gall to draft his own Special Order giving himself even more power than that of the ES (executive secretary). He gave (the President) the draft order last night and he (the President) asked JPE (Juan Ponce Enrile, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel) to review the draft. Siyempre (Of course), JPE thumbed it down.” [As told by unimpeachable Palace source to Tulfo]

“Then there are reports, now surfacing, about Rodriguez’s supposed bank accounts here and abroad that suddenly materialized after the election. The names in the bank accounts [Citibank in dollars; HSBC in euros; and HSBC Dubai & Commercial Bank of Dubai in dirhams] are purportedly in the name of Rodriguez and his wife.”

“The huge amounts in the banks seem to give credence to rumors that the erstwhile executive secretary collected P100 million for every appointment to lucrative bureaus.”

The breaking news and Tulfo’s column saved my time and energy from getting down to the first two stages of my sugar fiasco situation analysis: identifying the problem and finding the proper decision that must be made. With the problem identified, the decision came off not far behind.

The problem: Vic Rodriguez

The decision: Resignation

So, let’s go on to the third stage: Potential Problem Analysis by identifying the potential problems:

First, the newly-created Office of Presidential Chief of Staff (OPCOS) is redundant.

Spelling out OPCOS as potential problem, JPE, the legal counsel of PBBM, stressed that OPCOS will bring about duplication and overlapping of functions, confusion, and inevitable rifts among the different offices under PBBM.

He asserted further that OPCOS would be ineffective in decision-making, signing, review, supervision, or control over any government, department, agency, or office; and whatsoever to represent or act on behalf of PBBM.

Stepping down as executive secretary, Rodriguez himself appeared to be acquiescing to JPE’s assertion about OPCOS’ inefficacy. Its eventual laxity would allow him much more time, Rodriguez said, to attend to his personal need -- “to be present for his young family to witness firsthand [his] young family grow and evolve into how every parent would wish them to become.”

Second, other wannabes could be more worrisome than Rodriguez himself.

“The Law of Magnetism: Who You Are Is Who You Attract” is the title of one chapter of John Maxwell’s book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” where he wrote:

“People are attracted to leaders whose values are similar to their own […] It doesn’t matter whether the shared values are positive or negative. Either way, the attraction is equally strong. Think about someone like Adolf Hitler. He was a very strong leader (as you can judge by his level of influence). But his values were rotten to the core.

“What kinds of people did he attract? Leaders with similar values: Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo; Joseph Goebbels, a bitter anti-Semite who ran Hitler’s propaganda machine; Reinhard Heydrich, second in command of the Nazi secret police, who ordered the mass execution of Nazi opponents; and Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and director of the Gestapo who initiated the systematic execution of Jews.”

Let’s hear it from another Philstar resolute columnist Cito Beltran:

“[T]here is a far more serious problem in Malacanang and the PBBM administration than the unpopularity of Vic Rodriguez: The greed of power and position that is now pummeling Rodriguez out of the way so that various groups can put in their anointed ones in various offices of the executive department.”

Hitting the nail on the head, Beltran wrote, “People want to pin the tail on the donkey named Vic Rodriguez, but the bigger ass belongs to relatives and allies of BBM.”

Third, PBBM as a positive role model is open to question.

A study “Leading By Example: The Case of Leader Organizational Citizenship Behavior” published in the Journal of Applied Psychology highlighted:

“One way in which leaders exercise referent power is through role modeling, which is likely to enhance followers’ emulation of leaders’ behavior.”

No longer would I look deeper into the values of PBBM as a role model. Turned inside out by the recent divisive presidential election campaign, the innards of his persona projected by a fractious blast from the tumultuous past ranging from his family’s ill-gotten wealth to tax liabilities are standing out like a sore thumb. As one saying goes, “Beauty (or ugliness, as the case may be) is in the eyes of the beholder.” Whatever side we fall in with today, we must be ready for anything that will come our way during the PBBM presidency spawned by the phenomenon called Mirroring.

“When an individual, through choice or in a study, copies the behaviors of another, they’re said to be mirroring each other.” (Psychology Dictionary)

To illustrate, here’s the headline of the Los Angeles Times dated March 20, 1986.

“Marcos [Sr.] Had $88.7 Million Deposited in 5 World Banks: L.A. Institution One of Them, Document Says”

“Washington – Ferdinand E. Marcos [Sr.] had more than $88 million on deposit in five banks around the world – including the Los Angeles-based California Overseas Bank – according to a document found in his suitcase, Administration sources said today.

“The revelations came as the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs prepared to make public most of the 2,089 documents taken by Marcos [Sr.] to Hawaii when he fled Manila last month after his 20-year reign collapsed.”

To showcase the “mirroring” effect, let’s put the above headline side by side with this striking excerpt of Tulfo’s column:

“As of July 2022, Rodriguez and his wife reportedly had 29 bank accounts [local?], and 40 bank accounts worldwide.”

Curiously, what Marcos [Sr.] had pulled off during his reign, Rodriguez seemed to have mapped out in walking off a bundle of dough during his brief stint as campaign manager and executive secretary of PBBM.

Speaking of mirrors, I'll lighten up a bit the mind-boggling drift of this article with a spoonful of sugar, er, a sprinkle of famous lines from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

“Thou, O Queen, art the fairest in the land,” the mirror replied.

Question: How many “queens” are there in the “snake pit”? (young Imee’s term for the Palace as Manila Bulletin's Jullie Y. Daza teased in her breezy column)

Such a haughty question, I suppose, is beyond our grasp as men or women in the street. Instead, let’s face up to this core question within our reach. Try to find a mirror, and then ask the Man or the Woman in the Mirror you see every day:

“Do you stand by your values in your life today?”

Head still photo courtesy of Viktoria Slowikowska @ pexelsdotcom