MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
With 14 nominees named to head his executive team (as of this writing), the incoming President has 18 more positions to fill for a total of 32. Among the most sensitive and crucial, Agriculture, Health, and Defense.
What does it take to land in the cabinet? The shortest answer is it’s easier to qualify for the position of president of the Philippines.
According to an unimpeachable source, none other than the retired Chief Justice, Art Panganiban, a cabinet secretary is chosen to help the president “transform his thoughts and dreams into reality.” The members of his executive team are his alter egos who “mirror his advocacies, leadership qualities, vision, election promises, and deeply held beliefs.” In other words, each of them a mind reader as well.
Although the article from which I lifted the foregoing paragraph was written in 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte entered Malacañang, CJ Art’s thoughts are as relevant today as they were one presidency ago. That essay has since been collected with several more of his Philippine Daily Inquirer columns into a book, With Due Respect 3, published to mark his 85th birthday last December.
The Constitution bars cabinet members from holding any business or other employment during their tenure. They are required to live simply, “disclosing how they acquired their homes, how they can send their children to expensive schools, and how they spend for their vacations abroad.” If they have long forgotten enemies, those people could remember them well and long enough to bring up their past indiscretions. In addition, media’s all-seeing eye won’t leave them alone, especially during the unholy hours.
The newbies in the BBM cabinet should heed CJ Art’s advice to familiarize themselves with the Constitution, Anti-Graft Law, Ethical Standards Law, Administrative Code. “They might as well carry with them copies of these documents or digitize them in their iPads or iPhones for instant reference.”
A cabinet secretary’s acts “are deemed to be the acts of the president,” their work being to “carry out his mandate, his commitments, and his governance.” In the long run, the president is “answerable for their performance or nonperformance... their success will be his success, their failures will be his failures.”
Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere else, like PhilHealth?