Make no mistake about it. The latest addition to the Daily Tribune family as a columnist does not necessarily come from the anthropomorphic family of Hanna Barbera's bears, nor is named after the New York Yankees' baseball catcher who won 10 World Series titles.

But Yogi Filemon Ruiz, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s new Commissioner at the Bureau of Customs would jokingly admit his Yogi was a misspelled version of Pogi which his parents gave him along with his Lolo's name Filemon when he was born.

The new man at the helm of one of the most corrupt government agencies, however, seems unperturbed by his new calling as Commissioner. In fact, his calling card says it all: YOGI FILEMON RUIZ, Public Servant.

How does he want to make a difference, knowing most of his predecessors seemingly have tried but failed to contain the corruption in the agency?

"Ï won't say they were failures. They have laid the groundwork for the present Bureau of Customs. We'll just have to go where the frontline is, look at the situation and take it from there," Yogi said during his stint at the Daily Tribune's 'Straight Talk' program last Tuesday.

While the country's educational system is slowly reverting to face-to-face classes, the BoC, for its part, is now on the final leg of minimizing customer interaction with BoC employees.

Digitalization, for the Cebuano commissioner, is key in minimizing face-to-face transactions that are often blamed for most of the corruption in the bureau.

"We are on the final leg of our digitalization program," he said. "It's a big step in tracking down all the transactions at the bureau."

Yogi, a former Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency official, knows that as soon as he has implemented his anti-smuggling and anti-corruption plans to the letter, he will be the most hated man at the BoC. But he doesn't mind.

For him, he is just implementing his mandate from the President which is to modernize and streamline the BoC operations and make it at par with other world-class customs agencies.