Power to appoint – and disappoint

And so the jockeying for Cabinet posts has begun. Joey Lina is out, Angelo Reyes is in as interior secretary. At the energy, finance and press departments there are murmurs of changes or musical chairs. Big business is asking for retention of BIR and Customs chiefs Guillermo Parayno and Antonio Bernardo, and the return of Isidro Camacho in finance. Signature drives are ongoing for retention as well of Ignacio Bunye as presidential spokesman, Merceditas Gutierrez at justice, and Jose Ponce in agrarian reform. A reelected congressman of Cebu is lobbying for the tourism post of Obet Pagdanganan. Old pols are intriguing against Ed Ermita in defense, Larry Mendoza in transportation and communications, Luis Lorenzo in agriculture, and Mike Defensor in housing. Even the venerable Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo, a former budget chief and senator, has not been spared from bad-mouthing, prompting him to cry out, "I can’t believe the greed for power of some people." His detractor supposedly is Mai Jimenez, President Arroyo’s old school chum and assistant as trade undersecretary before she ran for senator in 1992. But Jimenez’s staff denies it, saying she prefers to be named permanent representative to the Asian Development Bank.

Mrs. Arroyo quietly had asked for resignation letters as far back as May 11, the day after the election. Since then, all her cabinet men have been on their toes or in exit mode. Press secretary Milton Alingod reportedly has been saying his goodbyes for the past six weeks. Only trade and industry chief Cesar Purisima was exempted from loose talk. The President had acknowledged that he left his lucrative job as chairman of Sycip Gorres Velayo accounting firm, the country’s biggest, to join her team in the last five months of her inherited term. And so he will stay in her elected six-year term. The rest must wait to be reappointed – or disappointed.

The President is keeping her cards close to her chest, according to budget chief Emilia Boncodin. The next two weeks will unravel who else will stay or leave. A Malacañang body is reviewing the performance of each Cabinet man in the past year. But everything will depend on Mrs. Arroyo’s final word. And that in turn depends on how she intends to fufill the ten-point agenda she spelled out during her June 30 inaugural speech.

Word from Malacañang is that Mrs. Arroyo wants a Cabinet that can cut through bureaucratic mazes. She has always been impatient for results. Early in her inherited term, Time magazine had observed how she’d call even bureau chiefs to deliver a bulldozer here or send medicine there. Excuses are met with her exasperated remarks about slowpokes. The President knows she cannot just parcel out her agenda to ten Cabinet men whom she can order to "get moving." The aim of a million jobs a year is the task not only of the labor chief, but of the trade and industry, agriculture and even the housing secretaries as well. Three thousand new classrooms a year is as much the responsibility of the education head as that of public works, and of agrarian reform or local governments or defense too. Water and electricity in every barrio is a job for public works and energy, as it is for environment, health, and social development. The Cabinet Mrs. Arroyo is forming must, according to a Malacañang aide, know how to work individually and in teams towards common objectives. So far three Cabinet clusters have been formed: economic, social, and security affairs.

The yeoman’s task of pushing the Cabinet needs assistance. So Mrs. Arroyo is also reviewing the work of her Palace staff. That help does not unfold in Cabinet jaw-jaws alone. Ronald Reagan once quipped: "I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a Cabinet meeting." Essentially, the staff gives her daily briefings on work progress and new ideas from the many presidential advisers and consultants. They then tell the Cabinet of major policy decisions and shifts.

George Reedy, in his study of the American presidency, recounted the importance of such presidential staffs. Every great monarch of history, he noted, had learned early the need to have at his disposal a force beholden only to himself and cut off from the rest of society. Sir Thomas Malory downplayed yet depicted it in King Arthur’s Round Table. As long as the knights ate at it under the king’s watchful eye and lived in his palace where he could call them by shouting through the corridors, they were his to ensure that the realm would be ruled the way he wished. Louis XIV did not build the Palace of Versailles as a tourist attraction but as a huge dormitory where he could make the nobles think and plan for him. Peter the Great downgraded the boyars whose power rested on their distance from Moscow and brought the reins of government into his own hands by making all the top officials dependent on him. The Turkish sultans reached the ultimate in the creation of a personal force by raising young Christian boys, captured in combat, as Janissaries who lived solely to defend the ruler. Machiavelli also patterned The Prince after the style of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman empire ruler kept a corps of bright men in his court to assess situations and thinks of solutions to problems. During their meetings, Suleiman would have the Grand Vizier sit in to help him make decisions, which would then be dispatched to the viziers, governors of the conquered lands, for execution.

Thus, behind the loud jockeying for Cabinet posts is a quiet study by Malacañang aides of who would best fit the job and how to best execute the ten-point agenda. And these Malacañang aides, too, are now the subject of Mrs. Arroyo’s option for appointment or disappointment.

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