A widely used approach to the assessment of the caliber of a group of individuals, such as a Cabinet, is to say that it is composed of the best and the brightest. The phrase was first used by one of the authors of books on the administration of US President John F. Kennedy, who recruited for his Cabinet highly regarded individuals like Robert McNamara, who had become an iconic figure in the US automobile industry.
To qualify as a part of a ‘best and the brightest’ group, an individual must be not only very bright; he or she must also be the best in actual performance. It is a tough requirement. An individual who is one of the brightest— recipients of awards and honors of renowned institutions of learning or a person of high achievement in the world of letters—may not necessarily be one of the best. And the opposite is true: an individual who has achieved great success in running institutions or in managing people may not have numerous academic initials after his name.
During the course of the 2016 Presidential election candidate Rodrigo Duterte assured the nation that he would appoint only the best and the brightest to his administration if he were to win. Only A-1 people for him; slouches would not be welcome. Has Mr. Duterte kept his promise?
Inclined as I am to be less than impressed by educational attainments unaccompanied by solid achievements in the real world, I am concerned with and am looking only to the members of the Duterte Cabinet who in the last two years have discharged their official functions in ‘the best’ fashion. They do not make up a long list. In fact it is a short list: a handful of names out of a 20-plus-members Cabinet.
Four names make up my list of Cabinet members who have delivered on ‘the best’ part of Mr. Duterte’s ‘the best and the brightest’ promise. They are (not necessarily in order of merit) the Secretary of National Defense, the Secretary of Finance, the Secretary of Socio-Economic Planning (and concurrently NEDA Director-general) and the Secretary of Education.
Of these four individuals, Delfin Lorenzana occupies the most sensitive position. In my book the Secretary of Defense – a little-known person before his appointment – has done very well under very trying circumstances. A friend of Rodrigo Duterte’s from his days as a Mindanao regional command head, Delfin Lorenzana has stood firm as a force for good sense in the face of Mr. Duterte’s public show of disdain for virtually everything American. During his long stay in Washington D.C. as a military attache at the Philippine embassy, Mr. Lorenzana came to know a great deal about the US and the American people and about how the US government functions. Through all of Rodrigo Duterte’s senseless tirades, Secretary Lorenzana has maintained his cool and kept his counsel. But whenever he has felt that there was a need to do so, Mr. Lorenzana has done what every other member of the Cabinet has not had the guts to do: contradict his boss. Delfin Lorenzana would be an asset to any administration.
Although I disagree with much of his TRAIN (Tax Reform and Inclusion) program, I feel a need to admit that Carlos Dominguez III has been doing a good job at the Department of Finance. He has been able to do so partly because of his demonstrated business management skills, his generally pleasant nature and, last but not least, his personal ties to Rodrigo Duterte. Mr. Dominguez has been humble enough to admit that the Aquino administration did a good job with the nation’s finances; but he has been putting in place some building blocks of his own. Without a doubt, the Secretary of Finance has been a force for respectability in the unruly world of Duterlism.
Dr. Ernesto Pernia’s experience as a private-sector economist as an official of a regional development bank is being put to a severe test by the confluence of the inflationary impact of the TRAIN tax changes and the Duterte administration’s Build Build Build infrastructure program. As a trained economist, NEDA chief Ernesto Pernia fully appreciates the crucial importance of economic stability for an administration that has launched programs to reduce the poverty level to 14 percent by 2022 and to make the Philippines a First World country by 2040. The next four years are going to be a very trying time for the nation’s chief economic planner.
Given her interest in social-welfare issues, Leonor Magtolis-Briones’ appointment as Secretary of Education came as a surprise to many Filipinos. To others it came as a complete shock, considering that the Department of Education is the largest bureaucracy within the government and Dr. Briones had never run a large organization. But by sheer force of character and with a passion for results, the Secretary has made the Department of Education a productive, low-key and, most important, a scandal-free institution during the last two years. The Department of Education has been in good hands.
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