Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas sees nothing wrong with President Rodrigo Duterte’s enlistment of retired generals for government service, especially if the appointees are Philippine Military Academy graduates.
“If we look at America, West Point alumni now serve in various capacities both in government and in the private sector there, mostly as administrators,” Gullas said, referring to the US Military Academy.
“West Point graduates have been performing high purely civilian functions as chief executive officers of some of the largest corporations in America and as presidents of American universities,” Gullas said.
“Frankly, we find it absurd for critics to even suggest that the President has been ‘militarizing government’ or ‘undermining civilian supremacy over the military’ with his selection of a number of retired generals to head certain executive departments,” Gullas said.
“To begin with, these retired generals are already civilians—just like everybody else—having been discharged from active military service,” Gullas pointed out.
Gullas made the statement not long after Duterte named yet another PMA graduate, retired Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Salamat, this time as a member of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System’s governing board.
Salamat was former chief of the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command and one-time Philippine Marines commandant.
“Clearly, the President believes that there are instances wherein he needs the help of an executive with a deep military background to get the job done,” Gullas, a former provincial governor of Cebu, said.
“What the President is doing— harnessing the services of highly qualified and disciplined men with extensive military training—is nothing new,” Gullas said.
Gullas said other post-EDSA People Power Revolution chief executives before Duterte also designated a number of retired generals to various senior government posts, including ambassadorships.
Gullas once served as a head of the House contingent to the bicameral Commission on Appointments, the constitutional body that confirms or rejects presidential appointees such as Cabinet secretaries; senior diplomats; military officers from the rank of Colonel or Naval Captain; regular members of the Judicial and Bar Council; and the chairpersons and members of the Commission on Elections, Commission on Audit and the Civil Service Commission, among others.
Gullas said the retired generals appointed by Duterte to Cabinet and other senior posts are all PMA graduates. They are: Ret. Gen. Eduardo Año, Secretary of the Interior and Local Government; Ret. Gen. Roy Cimatu, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources; Ret. Gen. Rey Leonardo Guerrero, Commissioner of the Bureau of Customs; Ret. Lt. Gen. Rolando Bautista, Secretary of Social Welfare and Development; Ret. Maj. Gen. Eduardo del Rosario, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Ret. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., National Security Adviser; Ret. Maj. Gen. Delfin Lorenzana, Secretary of National Defense; Ret. Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process; Ret Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, Chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority; and Isidro Lapeña, a retired two-star police general, Director-General of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.
Duterte’s Cabinet also includes former Senator and ret. Col. Gregorio Honasan, who recently assumed the post of Secretary of Information and Communications Technology. Honasan is also a PMA graduate.