“The President’s appointments have been on the lips of many Filipinos and have been the subject of Facebook pages and barbershop talk...
But please, Mr. President, if you want people to support the new government and give you and your officials a fair go, it might be a good idea to choose people who could serve...
Mahirap ang daang matuwid, especially if you have people around you who are not so matuwid.”
By: Ernesto Herrera
Loyalty is an important vir-tue especially in politics.
So I guess it is but natural for a president to make appointments on the basis of loyalty and friendship. Like all other presidents before him, it is but natural for President Noynoy to rely on a team of friends and other people whose opinion and advice he values.
Some in PNoy’s cabinet, as the President has said so himself, are individuals who have left their comfortable and lucrative jobs in the corporate world to answer his call to contribute to the new administration and help the country.
The President’s appointments have been on the lips of many Filipinos and have been the subject of Facebook pages and barbershop talk. Many ordinary Filipinos don’t have a clue as to how the President came up with the names of his cabinet officials and agency heads, but are just curious and patriotic enough to discuss these appointments.
They are just concerned knowing how crucial choosing people are. The President is not expected to be hands-on in everything that goes on in his administration. As he himself said, he is not a micromanager. He cannot be expected to know all the time if all his appointed officials are doing good; if they are following his daang matuwid. This makes it all the more important for him to choose the right people for the right job. The President, I believe, made a blunder when he appointed Rico Puno as Undersecretary of the Interior department, with the specific task of taking charge of the police.
We are understandably edgy about the appointment of Puno because of his alleged involvement in jueteng (Bishop Oscar Cruz implicated him) and the Quirino hostage tragedy, and PNoy is not disappointing us at all by keeping Puno in his post, with utmost trust and confidence.Sure, we get it. PNoy values the virtue of loyalty. That is expected. It is expected that friends will defend friends. And Puno in every forum has not been shy in claiming his close friendship with the President. But if the President will appoint people like Puno based on friendship and loyalty alone, then he will have no need for enemies.
Of course, the President is entitled to make bad choices.As far as qualifications go, even if Puno was president of a company that sold guns to the police and the military, that doesn’t make him an expert in police and security matters. Puno may well claim to know the ins and outs of the police and the military, as any businessman who sells guns to them does, so if it were a matter of inside knowledge (I hope, not participation) of the kind of corruption the goes on in their officials’ ranks, then indeed, he may be an expert in those matters. But as far as actual law enforcement is concerned, as far as security strategies and so forth, he has shown zero competence.
The Quirino Grandstand hostage tragedy has shown he is not a competent administrator of the police and that the job is not even the right one for him. Why put this bumbling official in such a sensitive job where lives are at stake? As Senator Miguel Zubiri rightly said why not appoint him to a less critical post, like those in the Presidential Management Staff, if the President adamantly refuses to let him go.The Senate hearing on jueteng last week further confirmed PNoy’s bad choice. In that hearing Puno said he was approached by friends and well-wishers who wanted to set up meetings with known jueteng lords (later he named Bong Pineda as one of them).
When asked who these friends and well-wishers were, he could not give one single name, and told the senators he cannot remember.When asked if he did not have some kind of security or a log which recorded his visitors, or a reception office where visitors have to go through, Puno said he didn’t have one. On further questioning, he reiterated he had so many people going in and out of his office that he really can’t recall their names, not one.
This, from a person who is supposed to be an expert in security, the person the President himself tasked to administrate police and security matters?I understand it if the President values the loyalty of friends. His predecessors, former Presidents Estrada and Arroyo, pretty much had the same trait, which at times had led to various disastrous consequences for the country.
But please, Mr. President, if you want people to support the new government and give you and your officials a fair go, it might be a good idea to choose people who could serve the government based on their expertise and qualifications, people with impressive scholastic and public service records, and whose loyalty is to the country first, before his so-called friends.
As it is, your administration already appears to be overwhelmed by the huge task of running the country and doing the right thing. Mahirap ang daang matuwid, especially if you have people around you who are not so matuwid.
Noon: Panahon ni Cory nagsunod-sunod ang brownout, tumaas ang presyo ng kuryente.
NGAYON: Panahon ni PNoy mag-uumpisa na naman daw ang Brownout, at mataas na nga ang singil sa kuryente, tataas pa daw.
Happy Happy na naman ang may-ari ng MERALCO. Maghanda na tayo sa pagbabayad para sa BROWNOUT.