“The President’s message was clear: If you cannot deliver, just quit. Get out. Scram. Begone!”
IT’S a work in progress.
That’s how President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and Press Undersecretary Claire Castro have described the ongoing performance assessment of government appointees amid the “bold reset” that the Chief Executive announced in May.
It was a surprising move, but necessary and perhaps already overdue. It caught by surprise not only administration officials, but more so the public which did not expect the President to take such a gutsy step to address his allies’ lackluster performance in the May 12 midterm elections.
The President did not mince words when he said during a podcast interview that he was ready and willing to remove appointees who have not lived up to the public’s expectations.
He said friends whom he trusted to help him achieve a “Bagong Pilipinas” would not be spared from the reset.
That was a brave move on his part. It is rare for us Filipinos to hear a president speak so plainly about reforming his government, to the point of sacrificing personal friendships and risking political support.
His exact words: “Hindi naman ito sa pagkakaibigan o pagmamahal natin sa isa’t-isa, kung hindi serbisyo para sa tao… Kung hindi mo kami tutulungan, umalis ka na lang dito. Get out of the way. Gawin mo kung ano ang gusto mong gawin, pabayaan mo kaming mag-trabaho. Just get out of the way so I can do my job.”
The President’s message was clear: If you cannot deliver, just quit. Get out. Scram. Begone!
The scuttlebutt is that if there’s someone in the current administration who should promptly heed this order and comply, it should be a close aide of the Chief Executive from way back who disappointingly failed to deliver the votes for the administration coalition during the May polls.
Many were surprised that the President’s candidates were trounced by their rivals not only in the local race but in the senatorial contest as well.
The lack of support for the Bagong Pilipinas candidates in Mindanao clearly showed that the people in southern Philippines did not trust nor approve of the Marcos administration.
Otherwise, they would not have expressed their dislike and frustration with the government through the ballot.
And why did this happen? South Cotabato Gov. Pax Mangudadatu has a good explanation. The government did not have high-impact projects in Mindanao. Government assistance came in trickles, if at all, and even these were given to “select” people.
Local politics was fragmented, thanks to the highly placed Malacañang official said to have been too busy building his own power base in Mindanao that he neglected to build bridges between and among provincial, city and municipal leaders to fortify the administration’s hold on power.
Hence, it is said, the President should consider serving the walking papers on this official to prove that he has no fear or favor in his “bold reset” of his government.
Or perhaps even better, this particular official in the presidential palace should simply spare the President from agonizing over a difficult decision to dismiss a longstanding friend from a sensitive position in his administration.
How? By submitting his irrevocable resignation to replace the courtesy resignation he had filed earlier along with other top administration officials.
Constitutionalists or contortionists?
The Supreme Court has spoken and declared that the Articles of Impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte passed overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives in February is unconstitutional and violates due process.
This effectively bars the Senate sitting as an impeachment court from starting this August to perform its Constitutional duty to look at the evidence and decide convict or acquit the impeached official.
The Supreme Court ruling pulled the plug on the planned move of pro-Duterte senators to file a motion to dismiss the impeachment case against Sara Duterte and do away with a trial that could expose her vulnerabilities and disqualify her from running in the 2028 polls.
The Supreme Court ruling, however, did not clear the Vice President of any wrongdoing but even emphasized that the House could still file another impeachment complaint against her by February 6 next year.
On our part, we are worried that technicalities and misinterpretations of our fundamental law’s provisions on impeachment by the Senate and the Supreme Court tend to make a complete mockery of the 1987 Constitution, but could also undermine our quest for justice and the primacy of rule of law that could plunge the nation into a political and economic crisis in the months ahead. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)
