It's not Abaya. It's Noynoy.
Most people just don't get it about Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya. For all the brickbats he is getting, the guy is actually doing a very good job. Just because he is at the helm of the Department of Transportation and Communication doesn't mean he has to lead it. Appointment to the Cabinet doesn't require acting out the part, especially if such appointment has less to do with qualification but more with political accommodation.
Abaya is a close friend and ally of Noynoy Aquino, who more Filipinos did not vote for in the 2010 presidential elections. Aside from being an aide of Noynoy's mother Cory during her own term as president, Abaya is now the acting president of Noynoy's Liberal Party. Nothing in his resume suggests the closest thing to being qualified for the position of DOTC secretary.
But there he continues to sit, on top of one of the most lucrative departments in the government. If there is one thing that qualifies Abaya for such a juicy position of trust, it is his unbounded loyalty and remarkable ability to do as he is told. It is the stuff of which political and personal success is made. As to being responsible for the official position to which he is accountable and bound, that is an entirely different matter altogether.
Not that he even cares if he fails, both on the job and in the expectations of the public. But that is a matter that is already taken care of by no less than his boss Noynoy. Amid calls for Abaya to either resign or be fired in face of the utter embarrassment that the DOTC has become under him, Noynoy instead insisted that he continues to trust Abaya and the only time Abaya will step down is when he, too, bows out of office in June 2016.
Awhile earlier I said Abaya was doing a mighty fine job as head of the DOTC and that is correct. As head of the DOTC, Abaya draws the flak away from Noynoy, where the buck for the mess that is the MRT should have stopped. All Cabinet departments of government are but policy enforcers of the chief executive. Noynoy cannot wash his hands off any responsibility for any mess-up in government.
Having Abaya absorb all the flak without any whimper of complaint is, to me, doing a mighty fine job for the president. Abaya has no contract with the Filipino people to succeed in his position. It is Noynoy who does. But for the utter failure that is the MRT, it is not Noynoy who gets skewered in public daily. It is Abaya who is. And he is very good at offering himself up for it.
Another thing that Abaya is very good at is entering into huge multi-million-peso contracts that do not undergo public bidding, with partners who are mostly unknown, and whose expertise in the job they are contracted to do largely suspect. Noynoy cannot be unaware of these developments at DOTC, but if he professes to stay confident and trusting of Abaya, then he must be in agreement with Abaya's acts.
So the people who keep flogging Abaya have got it all wrong. They hold Abaya to account for a job that was never his to perform. To put everything in order on the matter of transportation and communication in the country was never the reason for Noynoy's appointment of Abaya to DOTC. Noynoy placed him there because he was his friend. And friends have each other's backs.
So why the heck do Filipinos want the head of Abaya for? Give the guy a break. Noynoy placed him at DOTC for the same reason he put everybody else in their Cabinet positions -- as a reward for their loyalty and friendship, and to have people take the fall for him or to do his bidding. It is not with Abaya or whoever else in the Noynoy Cabinet that we have a problem. It is with Noynoy himself.
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