BLOGISTA
By Cha Monforte
jan 28
Billionaire Davao del Norte Electric Cooperative (Daneco) is embroiled again in management leadership row. Or that GM-BOD row- for the current protagonists Allan Laniba, the OIC general manager and Dean Briz, the board president, and for this as the representative of the critical BOD members. Time and again, it’s between the GM and BOD members.
I covered in varying lengths and chances as a newsman the Daneco management-BOD rows before- during the time of first GM Atty. Jose Amacio, 2nd GM Engr. Ricardo Tiu and 3rd GM Edgar Savellano, CPA. The GMs are all dead now, and the joke is whoever becomes the next full-pledged Daneco GM will be dead later.
Perhaps, it’s an innate characteristic of the power cooperative- being a cooperative and owned by many members, the power consumers- that rows and tiffs between the two layers of officers erupt time and again, with each claiming to be working for the interests of the paying members and the public who, being at the bottom of the organization, are actually the least who have the say in the daily or monthly decision-making and workings of the organization.
We long know it that the annual general membership assembly (AGMA) of electric cooperatives in the country is more of a compliance process than a decision-making avenue. But AGMA at times becomes either a gathering for a greatly passive rendition of a year’s accomplishments, if the management and BOD are not in the strait of conflict, nagkaintindihan sila, or it becomes a hotbed of divisive, at times recidivistic rhetorics and dramatics of a few members who have agendas either in pursuit for their own interests or from the dictates of the external yet influential players in the organization- the intervening, power-seeking incumbent politicians. Unfortunately, what is often muted in this yearly AGMA ritual is the act of the innocents braving to stand to be recognized to contribute a say or two for the good of the organization.
Twenty years ago, I saw that moro-moro Daneco AGMA at the UM Gym threatened by vocal critics to the management while the AGMA process was so cooked up to prevent reforms by preventing constant BOD incursion to the state of affairs of what could appear as a Marcosian-type of management. Brickbats and tempers flew amidst close guarding of the process. In the end, there was stupor and non-resolution of urgent organizational issues. But the management somehow won with the subsequent status quo. Hostilities that ended in legal tussles, too, erupted between the usual organizational protagonists in each organizational episode marked by the time of GM’s reign.
So this must be it: management-BOD row must be one of a power coop’s innate character. I’ve heard from BOD treasurer Ananias Darjan Jr the rationale and underpinnings in the questioning of the BOD members opposing the current OIC GM Laniba. The way I look it up, the litany of management deficiencies is not really meant for Laniba who just occupied the OIC GMship for nine months following the death of GM Savellano.
It would seem that Laniba is consequential. He occupies the helm of management of an organization that is already morphed out from organizational processes, systems and cultures set up by previous GMships. Laniba might be a party for having already been employed for over 10 years now, but the BOD, previous and present, might as well be the same party in Darjan’s accusing list of deficiencies.
But the Darjan’s List opens a sort of Pandora Box that would lead to good changes and reforms in Daneco that both the management and BOD would have to come to terms with for the betterment of the organization and its power service. Resistance to change would not do any good to the organization, which is already molded out from the organizational systems and cultures of the past.
If this current row where protagonists are both moving heaven and earth, after the last year’s obvious silence of the management, would lead to a situation of having like an irresistible force against an immovable object, then Daneco consumers would be the goner. From Darjan’s List, and with the parameter that Laniba is not the target of this, real changes and reforms will surely dawn in the power cooperative. (To be continued)
Filed under: Atty. Jose Amacio, GM Edgar Savellano, GM Engr. Ricardo Tiu, X GM Engr. Ricardo Tiu, Atty. Jose Amacio, GM Edgar Savellano, GM Engr. Ricardo Tiu
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