IT is never an equitable proposition when we are made to assume somebody else’s debt, yet this is what President Rodrigo Duterte—perhaps unwittingly—is asking us all to do, when he insists on keeping Assistant Communication Secretary Mocha Uson on the government payroll.
Upon her appointment in May 2017, Mr. Duterte said the former sexy dancer who campaigned for him in 2016 “deserved the honor” and said he was repaying her a debt of gratitude for supporting his presidential bid.
“I’m paying a debt of gratitude to them because they offered their services free at the time when I had no money, because they believed in me. Now it’s my time to believe in them,” the President said at the time in a mix of English and Filipino.
“There’s nothing wrong with the woman,” he continued. “She’s bright, she’s articulate… If it’s just a matter of dancing, she was not dancing naked.”
Well, it wasn’t Uson dancing this week, but that didn’t stop her from creating yet another scandal by using a woman’s privates and breasts as mnemonic devices for federalism, one of the President’s core advocacies.
In a video posted Sunday afternoon on her Facebook page, Uson is seen cheering as her effeminate co-host, Andrew Olivar, sings “I-pepe” and “I-dede”—referring to the vagina and breasts—while dancing and pointing to his crotch and chest, before exclaiming “I-pe-de-ralismo!”
Bright and articulate, indeed.
This is hardly the first time Uson has embarrassed the administration. In June, she defied the President by refusing to obey his order that she apologize on remarks she made on a separate issue.
Her blog has been home to fake news, misappropriated photos, disinformation and scurrilous attacks on the President’s political opponents.
Uson’s latest antics have angered Mr. Duterte’s friends and foes alike. Members of the Constitutional Commission that drafted a federal constitution for consideration by Congress were aghast that such vulgarity was used to promote their cause.
Even Uson’s nominal boss, Communications Secretary Martin Andanar, disavowed her blog and emphasized that she was not a spokesperson for the campaign to promote federalism.
Government documents indicate that Uson, as an assistant secretary, draws a monthly basic gross salary of at least P106,454 a month. The national budget also gives her tens of thousands of pesos more each month in representation, allowances and miscellaneous expenses.
At a conservative estimate of P130,000 a month, we suggest that any debt that the President owed to Uson has been paid in full.
The presidential campaign, after all, lasted only six months or about 180 days. Uson, appointed in May 2017, must have drawn a salary of P1.8 million in the last 14 months—or equivalent to P10,000 a day for each day of the last presidential campaign. Not too shabby for a dancer.
Moreover, we hardly think that what Uson has been doing—spending taxpayers’ money while monkeying around—is worth P106,000 a month, a sum that most of us would have to break our backs with honest work to earn.
But all this is beside the point, which is that we, the taxpaying public, should never have been made to pay for the President’s personal debt of gratitude. The inequity of this arrangement becomes all the more pronounced when the recipient of our hard-earned taxes is so arrogant, yet clearly unqualified, unethical and undeserving of the money we pay her.