“A press secretary is not only the voice of a President, but his spokesman. And he can do a lot more in elaborating and expounding what a President wants to say for the country”
While President Marcos Jr. achieved a lot of things during the Association of Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, especially when BBM had bilateral meetings with other ASEAN leaders as well as with US President Joe Biden and Chinese premier Li Keqiang, a lot more could have been done to benefit the Philippines if BBM had a Press Secretary.
I know this because I had joined past Presidents in most of their meetings with ASEAN leaders and their state working visits to other countries.
This is why I cannot understand that up to this date President Marcos Jr. has not yet appointed a press secretary.
While media outlets in the Philippines had covered the ASEAN summit, a lot more could have been done with the press secretary explaining and elaborating what the President had wanted for the Philippines.
The function of a press secretary is not only in relating to the media what the President wants to say, but explaining to the media what the President’s actions meant for us Filipinos.
This is the reason why I say the presence of a press secretary on occasions when the President meets with ASEAN leaders and other chiefs of state is all important.
Whoever the President wants as his press secretary – although I have mentioned that among all the names bruited around as possibilities – no one can come close to Mike Toledo, press secretary to former President Erap Estrada and his background in business being a vice president to the Manny V. Pangilinan conglomerate, when it comes to respectability and credibility.
In the forthcoming visits of BBM to China and Japan, he would do well to have already appointed a press secretary.
A press secretary is not only the voice of a President, but his spokesman. And he can do a lot more in elaborating and expounding what a President wants to say for the country.
In the case of President Marcos Jr. he could do well to be an Asian leader with his advocacies and statements.
Unfortunately, he had no Press Secretary to elaborate these for the country’s benefit.
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I cannot understand either why, up to this date, President Marcos Jr. has not yet named a Secretary of Health, although we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in this long dark burrow of the COVID pandemic crisis.
DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Veregiere may be doing well, but the country needs a permanent DOH secretary as the year 2022 draws to a close.
Santa Banana, if the President can appoint a former police chief as undersecretary for things related to health, why can’t he appoint a permanent health secretary?
Incidentally, Dr. Eric Tayag has been promoted as DOH undersecretary.
Considering that the DOH is a department, it certainly needs a permanent secretary working full time on running the department since the country is not yet over the hump of the health crisis.
Insofar as BBM being agriculture secretary, I can understand why he still wants to remain as agriculture secretary.
There are certainly more things he can achieve as DA secretary insofar as achieving food security, especially so with the recent super and killer typhoons devastating hundreds of millions and even billions of pesos worth of agriculture products, so much so that we are importing “galunggong” or the hard-tail mackerel.
It may take BBM months to stay as secretary of agriculture, but as far as I am concerned, Mister President, it’s time you appoint a press secretary and a DOH secretary.
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Following correlative events at the New Bilibid Prison — the killings of broadcaster Percy Lapid as well as the NBP inmate and alleged “middleman” Cristito Villamor and the sordid things behind bars, like unexplained deaths of more than 150 inmates during suspended Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag’s watch, which prompted the President to call Bantag ruling the NBP like his fiefdom – more should be done beyond the power of the Secretary of Justice.
How to make the NBP a regular penitentiary is one. And, especially, how to avoid all the graft and corruption going on in the BuCor.
The relocation of the NBP is one. This needs a presidential order. To where and what it will cost is now the problem.
There are proposals to make the national penitentiary regional and the sooner the better.
The NBP area in Muntinlupa is prime property, and, if sold, can command a big price.
So, my gulay, sell it and solve the national penitentiary problem.
Of course, how to accomplish it without graft and corruption is another thing because there’s always the temptation to make money, which has been happening at NBP.
As I said, avoiding these sordid happenings at the national penitentiary will take more than the justice secretary to resolve. It will need the political will of a President to reform the prison system. Just do it, Mr. President, and show to the people you have the political will.
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Actually, aside from the case of the killing of Lapid and the alleged “middleman” inside the penitentiary, there are more issues that the justice secretary and the Department of Justice itself have to resolve.
It’s for this reason that we cannot put a closure to this unsavory case,
There is, for instance, the entry of contraband items inside the prisons.
How can thousands of cans of beer, reportedly sold at more than a thousand pesos each, get past the prison guards?
There are also the contraband items found, like cellphones, gadgets,sachets of shabu, if the prison guards are not in cahoots with the inmates?
Likewise, sari-sari stores have been set up inside the penitentiary.
Who set them up?
My gulay, the NBP takes the cake in graft and corruption, even making Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue look like chicken feed in matters of corruption.
Santa Banana, there is also a big tunnel being excavated! For what purpose?
And there’s the tawdry affair of over 100 unclaimed corpses, deposited and unclaimed at the duly accredited funeral parlor.
Pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun said many have since been mummified, and only 50 of them can be examined. As to how those inmates, now mummies, died is another mystery of the national penitentiary.
Bantag claims if there’s no warrant of arrest for him, he’ll never surrender.
As I write this column, a warrant of arrest and subpoena for his appearance for the preliminary investigation has been deemed issued because of his absence from his known address.
But, will he really surrender, and how about the other suspects allegedly involved in the killing of Lapid and Villamor.
Indeed there should be no closure in this ignominious case until we, the people, are given the answers to the many questions being asked.
The case being filed against Bantag et al. is just Chapter One of this stranger-than-fiction case, which, as I said earlier, can only happen in the Philippines.
Relocating the over-congested NBP will not resolve everything.
Seeing culprits behind bars cannot resolve unanswered questions.
President Marcos Jr. must show zero tolerance on graft and corruption which has been happening at the NBP.