Collision course? - My Viewpoint

Unless President Erap Estrada is a magician of the first water, the proposed triumvirate composed of the Executive Secretary, the head of the Presidential Management Staff and, now, the Chief of Staff will result in even more confusion, intrigue and flying knives at the Palace.

The Executive Secretary's office and the PMS are covered by law insofar as their duties and responsibilities are concerned. If the functions of the Chief of Staff are covered merely by an Executive Order, whoever drafts this order will have to thread his way very carefully through a potential legal minefield. The last thing we want here is another petition before the Supreme Court questioning the creation of the office of the Presidential Chief of Staff, as well as the specific duties assigned to it.

The Chief of Staff will be occupying an office whose necessity is debatable and whose utility will, at best, be doubtful. It is clearly a case of putting the cart before the horse. The only reason we're even talking about it is not that the existence and effectivity of both the Executive Secretary's office and the PMS have been put under question, but because the current occupants of these offices have, on the one hand, become victims of the Malacanang snake pit but, on the other hand, cannot just be booted out summarily. Let's face it, the best solution is that the Office of the President be run by one outfit. Or, alternatively, all outfits serving the Chief Executive should be put under one boss.

Before the Marcos regime, that one boss used to be the Executive Secretary. Remember when he used to be called the "Little President"? Not anymore. Marcos began eroding the Executive Secretary's office by inventing "advisers" and "assistants" who reported directly to him and had authority to issue documents "By the President". The objective was familiar -- divide and rule! To cite just an example, the Executive Secretary had deputies and an entire bureaucracy assigned to handle legal matters. But that power has over the years been short-circuited by presidential legal counsel able to obtain better access to the President and get him to sign documents, often without the participation of the Executive Secretary's legal staff. The relationship, in certain cases, has become so firmly entrenched that even the Secretary of Justice has been undercut. This erosion was aggravated when, recently, even the PMS has a legal staff that also submits opinions which the President frequently adopts. This "usurpation" reached its peak when the power to revise government contracts worth P50 million and up was removed from the Executive Secretary and transferred to the PMS. Apparently, this was eventually returned to the Executive Secretary. But what's this we're hearing that soon it will be the Chief of Staff that will be reviewing and clearing contracts valued at P50 million and more?

A comparison to our traffic situation would be apropos, because a large part of the duties of the President's support staff is to manage the horrendous traffic of documents at the Palace, all jockeying for the President's attention and action. Metro traffic remains tangled and often chaotic because we still don't have one Traffic Czar but, instead, must tolerate numerous petty tyrants. Accountability, as a consequence, is difficult to pinpoint.

Unless we have that Czar in the Office of the President, one boss firmly in command and recognized and supported as such by "Code One", we're not likely to see the end of the Star Wars over yonder by the Pasig.