TAMA NA PO!: Some House leaders still want to punish or even expel seven congressmen who walked out on US President George W. Bush as he started to deliver a speech before the joint session of Congress last Saturday.

Answering back, two of the seven solons said they were willing to be expelled if that was the “price” they have to pay for their being “peace messengers.”

Why don’t our congressmen just go back to work? And grow up?

Tigilan na po yan bangayan! Kung di pa nyo alam, matagal na pong tapos ang pagbisita ni G. Bush.

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BUSH ENDORSEMENT: Some of the excitable lieutenants of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo also need reminding that President Bush has left and is now delivering speeches elsewhere.

Idle Malacanang officials and administration party bigwigs are trying to grab the limelight and some points with their reports that President Bush has endorsed the presidential run of GMA in 2004.

Apparently anticipating such juvenile antics of Palace clowns, the US embassy took pains early on to point out that Mr. Bush was not going to endorse GMA. President Arroyo’s barkers should have respected this nonpartisan stance.

Local politics should not be allowed to taint the positive and substantial gains of the Bush visit.

If Bush had kind words for his hostess and sounded like wanting her to stay on as president, the people would be able to sense it anyway without promptings from Malacanang.

And if there was some subtle endorsement, a noncommittal Palace should just wait for media and private observers to point it out. They would.

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APOLOGIA: GSIS President and General Manager Winston Garcia was inadvertently identified in a recent column as Wilson Garcia and GSIS was spelled out as Government Service and Insurance System (drop the “and”). We apologize to PGM Garcia and our readers. The errors were corrected in this www.manilamail.com site, but not in the print edition.

In an earlier column, we used the bastardized expression “betterer” and “more betterer.” We thought readers would know that we were using the terms, as one reader said, “pen in cheek.” We want to advise students that they should not imitate our using such terms in formal English.

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GARCIA STAYING ON: Still on the GSIS, President Arroyo told Garcia to stay on after he explained to her some of the accusations of Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho, who appears bent on removing him.

As we see after talking to some GSIS insiders, Garcia’s problems stemmed mainly from some business decisions that he made as president and general manager.

His decisions involved suspending for a few months the processing of loans of members to enable the system to catch up on its mounting collection-bookkeeping backlog.

While it may be a correct move from a business point of view, and for which he took responsibility, it was politically wrong. He conceded the error in his recent meeting with the President and Camacho.

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BITING THE BULLET: The problem was one that has been building up since the early 70’s. As Garcia admitted, the system had been remiss in posting payments of salary loans and premiums of its members.

Many government agencies, including the Education department and Camacho’s own Finance department exacerbated the situation by failing to remit on time their own contribution as well as those already deducted from their employees.

For lack of updated GSIS records, the processing and release of the loans and benefits was based merely on the members’ service record as vouched for by their offices and not on the number of years of their being GSIS members.

As Executive Vice President Arnaldo C. Cuasay put it, “Garcia bit the bullet.” Instead of taking the line of least resistance of just continuing the reckless releases of loans and leaving the monumental accounting problem to future administrations to untangle, Garcia suspended releases for a short period until the records were cleaned and set aright.

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LACK OF ALACRITY: Upon approval by the GSIS board, Garcia computerized the procedure and documentation. The backlog of records that filled one room were sorted out and quickly inputted and validated.

Reconciliation of accounts took some time. But it was deemed necessary to correct the errors. An employee may have been with the government service for 35 years but this does not necessarily mean he has been a GSIS member for the same number of years.

Some salary deductions already made by agencies were discovered to have remained unremitted. The anomaly was among the reasons why expected loans were sometimes reduced or the entire loan itself was withheld.

Another problem of Garcia is that Camacho, who has supervision over the GSIS as a financial agency, does not seem to appreciate his not showing alacrity to play along whenever Camacho has a financial scheme involving GSIS funds.

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BARZA PRIORITY: Judge Romeo F. Barza of the Makati Regional Trial Court is pushing as a priority project a mechanism in the Office of the Court Administrator for the fast and fair evaluation of administrative complaints against judges.

Barza, who is vice president for administration of the Philippine Judges Association, wants the creation of the Office of the Defense Counsel and Representation for members of the PJA.

He also envisions the building of a Hall of Judges or dormitory in Manila for judges and enrolling them in an insurance and medical program.

He expressed elation over the assurance of Senate President Franklin Drilon that the chamber would soon approve a bill upgrading the compensation of judges.

“By improving their compensation,” Barza said, “we expect more qualified lawyers to take interest in numerous vacancies in the judiciary, especially in the first- and the second-level courts.”

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SNEAKY PLOT: Remember what they say about idle minds? For having nothing worthwhile to do, some congressmen from Pampanga are pressing the creation by legislation of a new congressional district in the northern part of the province.

They want to create another (a fifth) district consisting of the towns of Mabalacat and Magalang, which together with adjoining Angeles City compose the first district.

The ulterior motive is clear, which is to create another district to accommodate an ambitious and powerful politician (guess who?) dying to be a congressman. A clear case gerrymandering.

Fafayag kaya hang mga kafamfangan?