Ultimately, any presidential appointee has to be judged by what he does in office, how he performs the job given to him to do. Of course, if for some reason you have taken the position that the incumbent president must fail, then all officials he appoints are doomed to failure, as well, even before the ink has dried on their appointment papers.
This week saw the filling of three major vacant Cabinet positions, one soon-to-be-vacated position of central banker and one minor, sub-Cabinet post that has gotten more than its fair share of criticism from the critics of President Rodrigo Duterte. In the coming days, many more key positions are expected to be filled by Duterte, with the end of the year-long ban on appointing people who ran and lost in the last elections.
Given the solid, broad-based support that Duterte continues to enjoy amongst Filipinos, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority is actually wishing that the new appointees do well in their new jobs and that only a few are really against them for reasons other than their hatred for the President. But it is an indictment of the toxic politics practiced by the Yellow minority for whom Duterte can do nothing right that his appointees are adjudged as unfit or incompetent (or both) even before they set foot in their new offices.
If the previous appointees of Duterte are any indication, he has actually shown a talent for bringing in the right people for the job at hand. As a long-time executive, Duterte has developed the ability to find the officials he needs and the lack of insecurity to hire people he doesn’t personally know.
Some of Duterte’s best-performing Cabinet men, for instance, have declared that they only met the President when he offered them a job—people like Benjamin Diokno at Budget and Judy Taguiwalo at Social Welfare who have absolutely no prior ties with the President. Contrast this with the infamous “kakistocracy,” or government of friends, classmates, long-time cronies and other least-qualified people handpicked by Noynoy Aquino to surround him and you immediately get the idea.
Another emerging hallmark of Duterte the Manager is his willingness to let go of people who don’t do their jobs or who have become involved in anomalies. This trait allowed him to let go of long-time friends Ismael Sueno and Peter Tiu Laviña, who have become poster boys of the swift retribution that awaits the non-performing in the Duterte administration.
The president has already proven that he will not hesitate to fire anyone he has appointed, something that should keep those who remain on their toes and on the ball; again, a refreshing change from the policy of the previous government to retain everyone, even the most corrupt and incompetent, because firing anyone would be an admission of error on the part of the appointing authority.
The people should trust the President to find the people he needs and, if they fail, to replace them before they can do any real damage. Of course, for some, that is already too much to ask.
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If you’re wondering why your cellular telephone signal falls off when you’re at home in your residential subdivision, perhaps you should ask your homeowners’ association. If your village doesn’t allow telecommunication companies to put up cell sites within its boundaries, you’re out of luck.
Residents of exclusive villages cannot expect better mobile services in their homes without allowing telecom service providers to install cell sites within the village premises, according to Globe. If subdivisions continue to block the construction of cell sites or smaller outdoor distributed antenna systems (ODAs), their mobile telephone and data service will not improve.
“It is physically impossible to serve residents from outside their villages, especially since these villages are made up of hundreds of hectares of land,” said Globe Chief Technology and Information Officer Gil Genio. “The range of a typical cell site, for which it can provide good signal for data, is only around 700 meters. This means that we need several sites inside these villages for residents to get the service they want.”
Local telcos have blamed poor service on the difficulty of putting up cell sites all over the country, saying it takes so much work and time in order to put up just one cell site. On the other hand, it takes only one subdivision resident or association to object to the cell site for the local government or barangay to stop service improvement.
“There is a tremendous amount of resistance from homeowners. They don’t mind new cell sites, as long as the cell sites are not in their village. It is a very difficult situation for service providers to overcome,” said Genio.
Homeowners associations oppose new cell site construction due to alleged health hazards coming from the cell sites. This despite declarations from the World Health Organization and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and the Department of Health that the emissions from local cell sites are not harmful.
“The radiation from your handset is actually higher than that of the cell site, and what many people don’t realize is that this handset radiation increases the farther your handset is from the cell site,” said Genio. He explained that the farther the phone is from the cell site, the stronger the power output required for the phone to get an adequate signal—thus increasing radiation.
Telecommunication facilities are considered infrastructure of national interest. But the public must realize though that there are roadblocks that prevent Philippine telcos from creating better networks.