The LP men

In one of the rare times President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino lll made quick decisions, the appointment of his erstwhile vice presidential runningmate Mar Roxas II to be his new Interior and Local Government Secretary was most welcome and laudable. Roxas takes over from the late DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo who died in a plane crash in Masbate last August 18.

Another quick decision that President Aquino made in his Cabinet team was his appointment of Cavite Rep. Emilio Abaya Jr. to succeed Roxas at the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC). Offhand, I think the appointments of Roxas and Abaya are among the most strategic decisions that President Aquino has made so far.

Roxas is president of the ruling administration Liberal Party (LP) while Abaya is the party’s secretary-general. From his own admission, the President easily made up his mind in selecting the two key LP men to fill the vacancies in his official family. The third LP man in P-Noy’s Cabinet is Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.  

Originally, Palace mouthpieces disclosed President Aquino will appoint a replacement for the late DILG Secretary before his scheduled foreign trip, the fourth one this year. He is flying to Vladivostok, Russia this September 7-9 to attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (APEC) Leaders’ summit.

From day one in office, P-Noy has shown a kind of leadership that takes quite a while before a decision is made final, even in the matter of people to appoint in key government posts. This will become more apparent as the days go by following the Court of Appeals (CA) decision that upheld the constitutionality of P-Noy’s controversial Executive Order 2 on the dismissal of the so-called “midnight” appointees of former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The last I checked with my Palace sources, the search committee in the Office of the President headed by Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa has been having a difficult time filling the vacancies in various government offices and agencies. Incidentally, Ochoa served very briefly as DILG Secretary in the transition following the accident.

But even on the second day that Robredo was missing, P-Noy already thought of naming Roxas to the DILG post. P-Noy himself revealed this last Friday after announcing the new Cabinet appointments.

There is obvious dearth of talents in the Aquino administration, a shallow bench so to speak.

It is fortunate that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has a wide pool of career diplomats to fill vacancies at a moment’s notice as in the case of ailing Philippine ambassador to China, Sonia Brady. More fortunately for our career diplomats, we have DFA Secretary Alberto del Rosario who believes in and respects the career system in our foreign service.

Del Rosario has reportedly already submitted to President Aquino a shortlist of nominees, any of whom is capable of replacing Brady. Some of the nominees reportedly have China experience, or he or she had at one time served in our Embassy in Beijing. So that should diminish, if not remove, any barriers to his or her being accepted by the Beijing government.

This will also spare P-Noy from becoming susceptible anew to designating political appointees in sensitive foreign posts such as China. We cannot afford amateurs to handle Philippine-China relations during these very serious times of irritants getting into the way of our friendly ties with neighbors in this part of the world. 

Political accommodation shows even in the senatorial lineup being put together by the administration. As LP chairman, P-Noy has to agree to put up a coalition with other parties so that the administration-backed senatorial ticket can complete a credible lineup of 12 candidates for the May 2013 midterm elections.

With the appointment of key LP men into P-Noy’s Cabinet, it is reasonable to expect there will a seamless transition in office of Roxas and Abaya at both the DILG and the DOTC. The President himself gave clear mandates to both Roxas and Abaya, allowing the two to pick their own men to help them in their new jobs in his administration. This should remove whatever dark shadows left behind at DILG.

Following the botched bus hostage rescue in Luneta on August 23, 2010, we also learned later from the investigations of the Palace fact-finding body that Robredo was actually not in charge of the Philippine National Police (PNP). As head of the DILG, the Secretary is the immediate supervisor of the PNP. But as it turned out from the Luneta bus hostage incident investigations, Robredo’s job as DILG Secretary was divided into two. One of Robredo’s three deputies at DILG, specifically, undersecretary Rico Puno was actually the one supervising the PNP. Puno is a known member of the presidential clique called “K.K.K” (Kaklase, Kaibigan, Kabarilan).

Robredo, on the other hand, was asked to focus on local governments, a job he did without rancor.   Aside from the PNP, the DILG Secretary has supervisory powers over such agencies as the Bureau of Jail and Management and Penology, the Bureau of Fire Protection, the Philippine Public Safety College, and the Bureau of Local Government Academy.

Abaya is luckier because he will just have to continue what Roxas already started at DOTC. Roxas has already begun at the DOTC the process of public bidding for P-Noy’s flagship projects under his administration’s Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Being an engineer and lawyer, plus the fact he is a politician, equips Abaya with all the background needed in his new job in the executive. Among these DOTC projects are the P60-billion Light Rail Transit-1 Extension project that will connect Abaya’s home province Cavite to the Metro Manila overhead railway system.

From presidential declarations made last Friday, Puno is out of the picture now. P-Noy announced he has given Roxas free rein at DILG. In the next days, we will see how Roxas reinvents the bureaucracy at the DILG which has a number of equally trouble-prone, attached agencies.

Although he belonged also to LP, Robredo — may his soul rest in peace — did not enjoy similar accommodations from the President. Appointed as “acting” DILG Secretary in July 2010, it was only in November last year when the Palace finally submitted to the Commission on Appointments (CA) the name of Robredo for confirmation.

If we are to believe Robredo’s fellow partymates at the CA, the late DILG Secretary was already scheduled for confirmation a week before the tragic plane crash. But the CA could not possibly give Robredo a posthumous confirmation.

The President obviously is still rankling from this. Immediately after he announced their appointments, the President appealed to the CA for the immediate confirmation of Roxas and Abaya. This early, leaders and members of the 15th Congress are promising both new Cabinet appointees that they will breeze through the CA confirmation process.

By their own count, LP men in P-Noy’s Cabinet are back to only three.