Grand Plan at the Kingdom by the River (20)

BY PETER G. JIMENEA, HOLE OF JUSTICE

This space is correct when it warned Ma’am Malou not to let down her guard yet even though King Tura had already ordered Hydrocephallus to go back to his den and never covet her position as Kingdom Information Officer (KIO).

Hydrocephallus merely took a tactical retreat. Like a dog, nagdilap lang sg iya pilas (he merely licked his wounds). News reached me that Hydrocephallus dropped by again at the KIO with a vengeance, with an engineer notifying Ma’am Malou that he was tearing down some walls and partitions to give way to the improvements he was contemplating to do without informing Ma’am Malou.

Ma’am Malou already filed an administrative complaint with the Civil Service Commission against Hydrocephallus and his gang for usurpation, oppression, and illegal demotion.

The subjects of the Kingdom by the River have yet to feel the promise of “pagbag-o” that King Tura vowed during the campaign period.

So far, the only tangible sign of that is the hiring of a plagiarist and a lazy bone to head the CAW-CAW whose first move afterward was to scheme to expand his fiefdom by annexing the territory of Radyo Mo and the KIO and named them together as Kawpid which was illegal. The KIO was created by statute.

I call him “lazy bone” because Hydrocephallus cannot come up with daily outputs; all he can do is copy from others. He is already eight months in office but you can only count his write-ups by your fingers. Compare him to Early Bird who churns press releases daily. And Hyrdrocephallus still fancies himself “information officer”. Compare him to Atty. Pit Song who is more productive; he created a blog which he updates at least twice a week with new pieces and photos. He is more innovative because he links his blog with social networks like Twitter and FaceBook to reach people worldwide.

Hydrocephallus tricked King Tura into signing an executive order creating the Kawpid and naming him as  head. The board did not create the Kawpid. What it did was merely approved an ordinance that consolidated the budgets of the three offices.

The next that Hydrocephallus did was to issue an office order telling Ma’am Malou to scram. Kunu, he was the new KIO and he was taking over.

In the time of King Lean, hospitals never ran out of medicines. Now, procurement requests under the Pagbag-o Regime for hospital supplies and medicines publicly bid in 2010 yet, have not yet been delivered for reasons known only to Team Pagbag-o which has been stirring distasteful news of scandalous public biddings where lowest bidders get disqualified and contracts are awarded to those who bid higher or those who should have been disqualified for not complying to requirements.

CSC rules require the employer (government office) to form a grievance committee within 15 days from receipt of the complaint. Failure to do so would compel the CSC, the central personnel office of the government, to form a committee and conduct an investigation itself. Ma’am Malou filed her complaint with the CSC in March yet.

Oplan Pagbag-o connotes change for the better. It presupposes the Kingdom of the River becoming a better work place.

But what can you expect when its most palpable sign is the assent to power of Hydrocephallus who is  known in the 4^th Estate as lazy bone and plagiarist? He was kicked out of a national daily after local reporters complaint of his industry of copying their stories verbatim, and by-lining their photos.

He was kicked out of an NGO funded by the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) for oppression and immorality. His own colleagues petitioned management against him for being highhanded, like the way he deals now with Ma’am Malou and her staff. But the more telling blow that threw him out to the cold was his own wife Rutchild who wrote management a letter complaining of his adulterous affair with his muni-muni Ruchella Jacerla. His misfortune aggravated because his own officemates not only corroborated her adulterous affair with his muni-muni, a married woman. They further complained that he would bring his muni-muni to office where they stayed together for hours alone.

That’s what he did last February 27 when he and muni-muni enjoyed each other’s presence inside his locked office from morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. According to him, he was only writing a thesis.

How could he write one when he already dropped out of his master’s studies at the West V? He cannot say he was helping his muni-muni do a thesis since she has not even enrolled in any post-grad course.

What compounded the problem is that he still converted their togetherness into an “overtime”, like what we commonly refer to as "C2C" or "converte to cash". Last month, Hydrocephallus collected 9,000 more on top of his salary in “overtime”.

If King Lean is busy doing the rounds and is gaining the admiration of disgusted elements in the circle of King Tura, all I can say: what you are seeing is a phenomenon that is bound to happen because the power play by Hydrocephallus and his gang can never, never be called “pagbag-o”.