In four hours and a half, you can be in Beijing, or Tokyo, or Cairns in Australia on a flight from Manila.

Or you can still be stuck at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, waiting to fly out. Because of congestion, passengers may see their flight sit for another two hours on the runway, waiting for a green light to take off. That means a seven-hour wait just to leave the NAIA.

Officials in charge of the NAIA and the Bureau of Immigration announced Saturday that the situation had improved and BI personnel leaves had been canceled. President Duterte should ask them if they want the same penalty that Perfecto Yasay Jr. suffered for lying.

BI personnel who had previously gone on leave have reportedly extended their absence. Only new applications for Holy Week leaves were canceled. So the BI counters are still undermanned in this season of heavy air travel.

As of yesterday, passengers were still being advised by several carriers to be at the NAIA five hours before departure for international flights, and four hours for domestic. And the reason was the same: there were too few immigration officers with the approach of Holy Week, one of the two peak travel seasons in this country (the other being Christmas).

The NAIA immigration officers, whose bureau must be preoccupied with a payoff scandal involving casino mogul Jack Lam, decided to go on leave en masse during the season when they can achieve maximum disruption of operations and inflict maximum inconvenience to the public.

There are civil service rules to deal with this type of bureaucratic behavior, but so far, the BI personnel’s superiors seem reluctant to apply the rules. Probably because the superiors were the ones who approved the leaves in the first place, and they were caught unprepared for the impact of their negligence on Holy Week travel.

It’s not as if the influx of passengers is a rare occurrence. We see it every year, in land, air and sea transport. Security and local officials in Metro Manila announced as early as two weeks ago that they were prepared for the annual Holy Week exodus. There is no excuse for airport and BI officials to be unprepared.

President Duterte often says, in expletive-laced pronouncements, that he wants red tape drastically cut and public services delivered speedily and efficiently.

He should rain profanities on his NAIA and BI officials. The situation in the nation’s principal airport is an unmitigated disaster and a national disgrace.

This is one sorry situation where he will be applauded if he warns those responsible for the disaster, “I will kill you.”

*      *      *

Problems at the NAIA, from collapsing ceilings to lousy toilets to the tanim-bala or bullet planting were among the biggest complaints against the administration of Noynoy Aquino, his BFFs in the Liberal Party and loyalists in the yellow army.

Among the other complaints were missing vehicle license plates and driver’s license cards, and the corruption scandal that led to that other national disaster, the Metro Rail Transit (MRT).

Rodrigo Duterte has such disasters to thank for his unexpected election victory, and by a landslide. He must have been fully aware of the public’s frustrations; tanim-bala ended abruptly when he took office.

With Manila hosting the upcoming summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, he has ordered police to ensure that there would be no road closures or even special lanes for VIPs, because traffic is horrid enough in Metro Manila.

For the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in 2015, the entire Roxas Boulevard was locked down for several days. Macapagal Boulevard, long stretches of EDSA and other roads were also closed periodically for VIP gatherings. The entire Intramuros was locked down for a night and a day for a ladies’ lunch.

Despite numerous interviews of those affected by the APEC lockdowns, the insensitive members of the ruling class failed to grasp the depth of public anger, and the threat – widely reported by mass media – not to vote for anyone endorsed by PNoy as his replacement.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Du30 did not get stuck in the APEC gridlocks, but he appears to remember the public outrage. This time, for the ASEAN summit, he reportedly doesn’t want a repeat of the misery inflicted by the .001 percent of the population on the hoi polloi.

Hurrah for this President. Now if he could untangle the mess at the NAIA.

*      *      *

President Duterte has given the impression of being an action man, and so far it looks like the impression is still sustained.

His performance and trust ratings are slipping steadily, although this is not surprising. From the dizzying 90s at the start of a presidential term, there’s no other way for ratings to go but down.

Is the action man image accurate? It is, if you see the mass killings related to the drug war as an indication of quick action on a serious problem. Processing of certain government documents has also speeded up.

Du30 has also moved quickly to jettison his appointees who were tainted with “even a whiff of corruption” – although quick action here seems selective. Cesar Montano, organizer of a recent pro-Duterte rally, is still around. The Las Vegas family junket of police chief Ronald dela Rosa was brushed aside; the guy can do no wrong.

If the Tsinoy buzz is correct, even quick action on drug suspects is selective. Peter Lim, confirmed by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency as the same person in the top five of its most wanted, has reportedly been allowed to quietly leave the country. Lim and his businessman brother reportedly contributed heavily to the Duterte campaign. Lim’s nephew received VIP treatment as a road rage suspect.

Exceptions herald the doom of any well-meaning campaign.

*      *      *

As of last Saturday, Metro Manila traffic remained awful. The MRT is as glitch-prone as ever and the coaches bought by PNoy’s BFF from China are still without engines. If the top-of-the-line fire trucks bought from Austria are replaced with cheap ones from elsewhere, will they also lack engines, ladders, hoses?

The release of license plates and driver’s license cards is moving as slowly as the administration of justice.

Still, people are hanging on to the image of this Chief Executive as an action man. And public expectations are high that his team will do better if not in managing the country, then at least in managing the nation’s premier airport.

As of yesterday, the public was disappointed.

Source: https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2017/04/10/1689363/action-man