The media of late had been filled with the news about Roilo Golez’s death and about the important things he did or was doing as a politician and as an advocate of our right over the West Philippine Sea.
But the most important thing Golez did was what he did before he became a politician. He came into the limelight after he was appointed by the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos as post master general. As head of the post office where pilferage was the norm and postal delivery was slower than a snail, he worked to change that reality.
Suddenly, mails were being delivered within 24 hours in Metro Manila if posted also in that place. Before that it would take weeks for a letter sent from a city in the Metro and to another town in that megalopolis. So that 24 hour speed was unheard of and is still a record even courier services now can hardly beat.
For the letters bound for the provinces outside of the Metro, Golez made it a point that these were delivered in 48 hours to nearby places or 72 hours to farther sites. For those posted for remote places, they were delivered within a week.
This achievement was great and it shows that government agencies are not that hopeless and that they can made to be as efficient as outfits in the private sector are.
But then Pres. Marcos became so unpopular such that he was hard put to find viable candidates to fill up the slate of his then political party, the KBL or Kapisanan para sa Bagong Lipunan, for one election in the early 1980s. So he tapped Roilo Golez and other appointees of his who did well in the bureaucracy. Considering his outstanding performance in the Post Office which made him popular, he handily won in Paranaque as a congressman. From then on, he was the politician to reckon with in that city until his death a few days ago.
He was a living proof that government agencies are not that hopeless. **