Alvarez to Subic freeport execs: Take a vacation

Martin Diño

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—The House of Representatives on Tuesday stepped into the leadership feud plaguing the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), asking the agency’s two top officials to temporarily refrain from performing their duties.

During a special congressional briefing here, lawmakers addressed an administrative order issued by SBMA Chair Martin Diño that created a task force that would inspect and monitor the business and financial operations of the agency. The order reportedly encroached on the functions of SBMA Administrator Wilma Eisma.

The lawmakers, led by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, were here for the Zambales leg of a northern and central Luzon inspection tour. They convened into an ad hoc and special committee on bases conversation to hear Diño and Eisma explain the ongoing leadership row.

Diño’s administrative order may sow confusion among SBMA employees, said Malabon City Rep. Federico Sandoval II, vice chair of the bases conversion committee.

Diño told the lawmakers that he issued the administrative order on May 2, asserting that he had the authority as
SBMA chair. He said the task force was meant “to ensure that the agency’s business operations are diligently implemented and financial resources will be kept intact.” He said the task force would improve SBMA’s “earning capacity.”

But Eisma said Diño, as chair of the SBMA board of directors, “has no power or authority to issue the administrative order, much less to create a task force that will directly involve itself in the operations and day-to-day activities of SBMA.”

The oversight and review of business operations and financial safety and security should be tackled by the SBMA board’s risk and audit committee and finance committee, Eisma said.

“This purported task force interferes and encroaches upon this power, function and duty of the administrator and CEO (chief executive officer), and is thus counterproductive, superfluous and unnecessary,” she said.

Wilma Eisma

The SBMA chair used to perform the functions of administrator until then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order No. 340 in 2004 that separated “the powers, functions and duties of the chair of the SBMA board and the administrator as CEO of the SBMA.”

Alvarez told Eisma and Diño to “take a vacation” and refrain from signing documents or entering into agreements with locators until the House committees resume their hearing scheduled on June 8.

Alvarez said they would invite Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and a representative from the Department of Justice to shed light on the leadership delineation in SBMA.