FORMER President Fidel V. Ramos on Friday advised an ‘insecure’ President Rodrigo Duterte to avoid making decisions, particularly on policies and security without first consulting his Cabinet members.
“A lot of these fears being generated by him is because he is… insecure. Pardon me for saying this, Mr. President Duterte, but you must be at peace with yourself, do not talk about dying soon or being killed or not caring about your life,” Ramos said in an interview with online news portal Rappler.
“You must preserve your life, you have a lot of things to do and people will support you. We don’t want the President to be just disposed of like that. You are elected for six years, you fulfill it,” he added.
Ramos expressed concern after observing Duterte making policy pronouncements without the knowledge of people around him, and urged him to make proper use of government mechanisms at hand.
“The way it is, there is a lack of consultation, as I said in the beginning, not just with his active commanders. Maybe not even with the Cabinet members concerned, but also with the rest of the citizenry,” Ramos said.
The former president also decried what he called a “one-way kind of decision-making in law enforcement these days.”
“There is a need for more consultation by the leaders, led by the President, with other stakeholders, meaning the people themselves, including the most ordinary guy,” he added.