Can anybody stop NEA from opening the selection and hiring process for a new BENECO General Manager?

The better question is, WHY would anybody want to stop NEA from doing that—hire a new GM through the compliant cooperation of the 5-man Interim Board?

The only logical answer is, ANYBODY who doesn’t stand a chance of getting selected, even if he applied.

That someone would NOT want NEA to revisit its “deep selection” process of vetting and grooming their handpicked GM while paying lip service to “trusting the process.”

I’ll be specific.

Current Assistant General Manager Engr. Mel S. Licoben, for example—his chances of being selected and hired as legitimate General Manager, once and for all, are the same chances of a snowflake not melting in hell.

Say whatever else you want, NEA still does NOT want Licoben as general manager.

If they did all this time, it would have been far easier to have just appointed him part of “Task Force BENECO” than having to go through all that song and dance number of suspending him for 45 days, then demoting him to assistant general manager and appointing his former subordinate Ramil Rafani as ACTING GM.

To my mind, NEA suspended Licoben for only one reason—and it’s not because he was “co-guilty” with the Magnificent Seven who they slaughtered en masse ostensibly as a result of an “audit.”

NO. They suspended him for the purpose of sticking a black mark in his service record.

That way, even if a new competitive selection process ends up with Licoben leading the field of candidates, NEA can still discard him under the “fit and proper rule” because of his record of ‘final conviction’ (I’m using these terms loosely) for an offense involving “moral turpitude”—for which he served full penalty.

Him voluntarily serving the penalty, without reservation (instead of “under protest” as I advised him, in vain) is an admission of culpability. He is now estopped from denying it.

Mel must know this, but he cannot even so much as pout or grouse. He had been warned in no uncertain terms by Mayor Benjie Magalong himself way back in January, when he advised him not to fight the suspension anymore, “Mahirap na yan, Mel, gobyerno ang kalaban mo dyan.”

Before you think ill of the mayor, let me say here that he was absolutely being a brother and a benevolent adviser to Licoben when he told him that.

No, Mayor Magalong wasn’t calling the shots or “running the show” in BENECO as I’ve often heard him being accused of. But those who ARE, indeed, calling the shots cannot keep it a secret from him. So Mayor Magalong knew that the shakeup was GOING to happen, no matter what. Even he cannot stop it.

Mel Licoben has laid down a long service history with BENECO that started in the late 80’s. I was still a reporter for the Gold Ore covering BENECO news (the public utilities BENECO, BWD and PILTEL were my “beat”) when Mel joined the cooperative work force as a lineman. A self-made man, Mel rose through the ranks, serving under four or five GM’s I think—Gerry Evangelista Sr., Jorge Atencio, Agustin Maddatu, Peter Cosalan and finally Gerry Versoza. I’d say Mel would have been in the service at least 39 years by the time he retires in about a year or two.

Think about that. Imagine how much his retirement lump sum would be, and how much his monthly pension would compute to, based on the current salary grade of the general manager of a “Triple A”-rated electric cooperative of P204,000.00 a month.

ALL OF THAT would vanish if he goes up against NEA now.

Well, not exactly vanish (as in disappear) but it would be held in escrow as long as there remains an unresolved administrative case involving him versus NEA, regardless if he is prosecuting or defending.

Put yourself in the man’s shoes. It is laudable to stand on principles, fight for justice blah blah blah…

But at some point a man has to think of his family and their future, too. How will he feed them, clothe them, keep a roof over their heads, etc. when he is no longer gainfully employed, and only dependent on his pension?

So, you see, Mayor Benjie has a point.

All these well-meaning friends and supporters of Mel Licoben crying “MSL is our GM” do not realize one thing: it’s NOT up to THEM.

Why, Leni Robredo is MY President, too, and she will be—forever—as far as I’m concerned. But she will never ACTUALLY be President NOW. It is what it is. As passionate as I make myself to be on the issue, it’s NOT up to ME.

Same thing with BENECO. Whether or not Mel Licoben becomes the GM for good is up to NEA now.

It’s not up to the member-consumers even. Member-consumers do NOT participate in the GM selection. Any glib-tongued apologist who rhapsodizes otherwise is lying. Read the By-laws.

Of course, in 2021, it was up to the Magnificent Seven—the maverick directors Esteban Somngi, Jeffred Acop, Mike Wayway Maspil, Peter Busaing, Jonathan Obar, Josephine Tuling and Robert Valentin.

They fast-tracked a plan to create the position of Assistant General Manager (AGM) which will be held in six-month rotations by all the department heads, to give the Board a change to observe them in action—“under fire” so to speak—when all of a sudden NEA decided to anoint Marie Rafael, over and above their heads.

So the Magnificent Seven settled on pushing Mel Licoben in premature response (they have not yet had the opportunity to observe the other department heads also in contention) because they could not have rejected Rafael without an alternative to boast of. After all, the underlying issue was who has the power to appoint a GM? The issue was NOT how hard can the board oppose a GM handpicked by NEA.

There are no two ways about this: if the board of directors had not appointed Licoben in full voting once, and the Magnificent Seven had not re-affirmed that appointment in a second voting upon rejecting Rafael, Mel Licoben would not have been general manager for one day.

So let me put this in terms explicitly clear so there’s no chance for any misunderstanding.

There is NO WAY Licoben will become GM “again” by any selection process administered by NEA—then and now. They have fought him too hard and too long, and he has rubbed their faces in the concrete too deep. There is bad blood between NEA and Licoben that will never be removed, forgotten, erased, concealed or masked by any effort by anyone to sanitize or deodorize their malodorous history. Nani Almeda succeeding Manny Juaneza changed none of those dynamics.

The only way to return Mel S. Licoben to the GM seat is to ask the SAME people who installed him there in the first place to do it again.

In short, “MSL is our GM” is totally meaningless—and a pipe dream at this point—unless the battlecry of “Magnificent Seven ARE our BOD” is also revived.

Without a return of the Magnificent Seven, there will be no return of MSL. Even in Disneyland, you cannot have Snow White and discard the Seven Dwarfs and still expect everyone to live happily ever after.

Some woke clown is spinning the alternate fairytale that this Interim Board of Directors handpicked by NEA can be persuaded to implement the resolution of the original board and thus appoint Licoben as THEIR own GM, in their own right.

How naïve can you get.

The mission of Task Force Beneco—including the “Project Supervisor”—is to stop and, if practicable, to undo everything the original board did. And they are on a roll. They have dissolved the power supply aggregation arrangement with neighboring EC’s, they have discombobulated BENECO’s conversion into a “true” cooperative, confused the jurisdictional overlap between NEA and CDA (Have you EVER heard Almeda encourage anyone to pay his capital share contribution?), they have invented non-existent positions like “corporate secretary” of a NON-CORPORATION whose salary is even higher than the directors’—all expenses for which are not provided for in the approved cash operating budget of the cooperative, stopped practically all benevolent community social responsibility initiatives of the old board, disavowed all the results of the “ARGAM” like the event never happened…we can do this all day.

Or we can just stipulate that this interim board does not exist to promote the agenda or pursue the highest interest of the member consumers to whom they owe no allegiance.

The sum of their purpose is to provide “cover fire” for all the jockeying for positional changes in policies intended by NEA.

Whereas in the past, all decisions of the board (the real ELECTED ones) are vetted against the criteria of “Can we defend this decision before the General Membership?” today the prevailing metric is “Is this decision aligned with what NEA wants? Will NEA approve this?”

There are also some hawkish eager beavers peddling the snake oil that if somehow enough signatures are gathered from among MCO’s urging the political leadership to pressure NEA to just re-recognize MSL as GM, maybe we can glue back together the shattered glass.

I’m interested to test that theory myself. Recently, Mayor Benjie Magalong dressed down a group of BENECO employees still making too much noise about this “MSL is our GM” bit, long after the mayor had already publicly demonstrated that he was walking in step with Almeda on his “Solomonic” solution to sack both Rafael and Licoben as “twin GM’s”

Magalong must have felt, fairly I do agree, that the residual vestige of discontent is starting to dangerously ricochet on him. Some anti-Magalong quarters have taken to stoking the conspiracy theory that the persistent crisis in BENECO (long after Marie Rafael is out of the picture) indicates that Magalong misread the public pulse.

That promises to be a developing Achilles heel on his part. As many as there are people who voted for him last May 2022 BECAUSE he stood with BENECO, many could possibly vote AGAINST him the next time because he could not return Mel S. Licoben as BENECO GM!

That is setting him up for inevitable failure, because he can’t (he won’t) commit to bringing such an outcome about. So the more people sign an “MSL is our GM” petition, the clearer picture it gives his detractors how vulnerable Benjie Magalong can be on the public utilities issue.

If you were Magalong, you would wish Mel Licoben’s “Fight Ladta Army” would just let a sleeping dog lie.

Unfortunately, that army has no choice. Only in the court of public opinion can Licoben win. In the Court of Almeda, he loses big.

So for Licoben’s supporters to fight for him in earnest, they have to burn some bridges for him, namely (1) his bridge to a satisfactory and settled retirement, (2) his bridge to Almeda, which is woobly even now, and most importantly (3) his bridge to Magalong who is doing his best to create a graceful REWARDING exit for him.

I am all for “activism” and “wokeness” and stirring a cauldron of mass actions to “duplicate October 20, 2021” to fight noisily for Melchor S. Licoben.

I just have one suggestion: GET HIS CONSENT FIRST. I dare anyone, especially the MCO’s who respected me once upon a time.

If Mel say “GO!” I swear to damn the torpedoes and pull out the battering rams and all together we will come hard after Almeda and Magalong.

If Mel says “yes.”*