The President announced Thursday he had accepted the resignation of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II.
Prior to the announcement, talk was rife that the secretary was on his way out because of a string of deeds that appeared to run counter to the administration’s war on drugs and on corruption.
For instance, Aguirre’s prosecutors dismissed charges against several drug suspects including Kerwin Espinosa, who at a Senate hearing confessed to dealing drugs, and Peter Lim, whom no less than the President had tagged for his involvement in the drug trade.
To everyone’s incredulity, the prosecutors said evidence was weak against the suspects.
Soon after, Aguirre flirted with the idea of allowing Janet Lim-Napoles of pork-barrel notoriety into the government’s Witness Protection Program. Just the mention of Napoles’ name enrages many Filipinos for her role in a grand scheme that allowed corrupt lawmakers to divert public funds to their pockets through fraudulent and hypocritical means.
Over in Bohol, the DoJ also dismissed charges against a provincial board member accused of killing his wife.
In his last day at work Friday, Mr. Aguirre attended the first-Friday Mass and said he hoped he was leaving the department a better place than he found it. A swan song—anyone could hope away, of course.
The President sends a good message getting rid of his fraternity brother and loyal associate. This is not an extraordinary thing to do—it is, instead, the bare minimum if Mr. Duterte were indeed serious about stamping out, or at least minimizing, illegal drugs and corruption.
Because a chief executive’s time, attention and energy are finite, he cannot attend to a multitude of concerns at the same time. This is why he must choose his alter egos on the basis of more than a shared history, like-mindedness or personal loyalties.
Clearly, Aguirre did his best to serve not necessarily the people but the man who appointed him. In the end, this approach backfired.
The Office of the Secretary of Justice, by its very name, is exacting. May the succeeding secretaries, led by just-appointed Secretary Menardo Guevarra, make it more deserving of its name.