WE expect a certain amount of tension in a Cabinet where competing interests and even ideologies are represented, but the bickering that marks President Rodrigo Duterte’s official family—not yet a year old—is worrisome.
The latest blowup came after the President fired Undersecretary Chiara Halmen Valdez of the Office of the Cabinet Secretary over a disagreement over rice imports. Valdez represented her boss, Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr., on the NFA Council, which sets policy for the National Food Authority.
Valdez wanted to continue the policy of the Aquino administration for which she first worked to allow private traders to import rice, in opposition to the stated direction of both Duterte and Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, who favored self-sufficiency in rice and government-to-government imports to build up the country’s buffer stock.
Valdez, however, did not go quietly, and in a statement accused Piñol and NFA Administrator Jason Aquino of simulating a rice shortage so they could push through with a government-to-government importation deal.
It is unclear how much of this conflict extends to Evasco, who earlier defended private rice imports and castigated the NFA administrator, Aquino, for refusing to approve it.
Evasco said Aquino’s failure to implement the order to allow private rice imports was “compromising the country’s food security,” suggesting the Cabinet secretary is at odds, too, with the administration’s stated agricultural policies.
Similar clashes have erupted over the administration’s policies on the mining industry, with Environment Secretary Regina Lopez butting heads with Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez over her drastic moves to close down large mining companies, and the impact this will have on thousands of workers and the economy.
We also see a brewing conflict between Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, who wants the Bureau of Immigration to set its house in order by cutting excessive overtime, and Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, who wants to retain the old system—opaque and prone to abuse—by which Immigration commissioners could receive two-and-a-half times their regular pay in overtime.
Debate within the President’s official family, to a certain extent, is a healthy process by which the best ideas will win the day. However, when these debates spin out of control and spill out into the media with accusations of graft and corruption, it erodes public confidence and damages the credibility of the entire administration.
All this suggests that it is time President Duterte put an end to the public bickering among his Cabinet members, who really ought to speak with one unified, responsible voice—or not speak at all.
