Some months ago, I wrote about the confirmation travails of two of the better known ladies in Duterte’s Cabinet, the equally feisty socialite Gina Lopez and socialist Judy Taguiwalo.
Gina had already been turned down twice by Congress, and I predicted she was out for good, as it did turn out later when the President declined to put in her name a third time. Too noisy, too impatient, she was easy pickins for a Congress that hearkens to the siren call of lobby money much like pigs—soooee! soooee!—rush to the trough.
But Judy, I thought, would fare better. Despite already being turned down once, I thought she had done well during the second round of confirmation hearings, despite some pointed questions about her leftist background and a typically boorish remark about her marital status from an actor-senator.
How little I knew. She did end up being turned down a second time, in July, and then a third time the other day. Under an informal “three strikes, you’re out” rule at the Commission of Appointments, that’s the end of the line for her.
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The decision to reject Judy has been hugely unpopular. Very few people have failed to be impressed by her professional efficiency, her obvious concern for the poor, and, not least of all, her refusal to suck up to the rich and powerful, including several congressmen lusting after the goodies in the DSWD trough.
In an effusive endorsement speech, Senator Ralph Recto said “she personifies that elusive political ideal that persons of different political persuasions can come together for the common good.”
It didn’t help that the commission couldn’t come up with a halfway intelligible explanation why she was turned down. Nor that none of the members who voted against her was willing to be identified.
Ironically, all the oppositionists on the commission lined up behind her, then used her rejection to practically adopt her as a Liberal Party-mate “for continuing Aquino’s successful conditional cash transfer program…and echoing the LP’s opposition to lowering the age of criminal liability of minors.”
You can always count on the party of Robredo and Drilon to scramble for every last credit-grabbing morsel thrown their way. Nothing is wasted with these guys.
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The problem that finally even someone of Judy’s formidable talents couldn’t overcome is a product of history-in-the-making. In the end, no matter how winsome the singer, it’s still the song that really counts.
Judy was brought into the Duterte Cabinet as one of several nominees of the communist-led NDF, whose role in the armed struggle is to provide political cover for the CPP and NPA. She was a beneficiary of the President’s heroic efforts to pitch a peace-making tent wide enough to shelter even Leninist revolutionaries committed to the destruction of the Philippine state.
As part of the quid pro quo, peace talks resumed with the Left and struggled along for quite a while. But inevitably, the CPP’s typical hubris reemerged. The NPA couldn’t be restrained from doing what they try to do best: killing Filipino soldiers and policemen.
And the NDF relapsed into their default attack mode when they found out that, even under someone as sympathetic as Duterte, they still couldn’t count on getting 100 percent of what they wanted every time—which as properly raised historical materialists they’ve always believed is their due.
Judy herself hung on to her NDF point of view on some issues: approving of forcible housing takeovers by Kadamay, opposing the tax reforms pushed by Duterte’s economic managers. But to her credit, she mostly kept those views to herself in the interest of doing a good job at DSWD and working well with the President and her Cabinet colleagues.
Not so though for her NDF peers. After her rejection, they accused Duterte of “not doing enough” to push Judy, even though he’d put in her name a record three times.
Which of course begs the question of whether in fact “doing enough” is already doing too much—now that the peace talks are off, the NPA terrorists (classified as such by the European Court of Justice) are back in action, and their NDF comrades—in or out of the Cabinet—are again, strictly speaking, security risks if not outright enemies of the state.
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It’s a real pity that a woman of Judy’s caliber was caught in the middle. But precisely because that’s who she is, we’re sure she’ll understand and that she’ll bounce right back, none the worse for the entire experience.
In every one of her newspaper interviews afterward, Judy said not a single word of appreciation to the President for having taken chances and bringing her into his official family for an entire year, even after the NDF had stopped being a reluctant ally and relapsed into full-time enemy mode.
Was this just senior forgetfulness by her, or was it part of a political rehabilitation process that’s already begun for her? Time will tell how much, if anything, Judy has managed to bring home from her one year in Malacañang.
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.