‘Arroyo Has The Best Of FVR Men’

 "What's wrong with us?"

This, in a nutshell, was the reaction of some of President Arroyo's appointees who are identified with either Executive Secretary Renato de Villa or former president Fidel Ramos. Appointing them, they said, is testament to the good job they did during Ramos' time.

“It is not proper to (castigate) Cabinet members according to who they worked with in the past. She knows the people she appointed. She has worked with them and knows their capabilities,” said Paul Dominguez, the presidential assistant for regional development. “She’s made a choice and I think it’s a strong and capable Cabinet,” he added.

Dominguez explained that the assumption to office of Arroyo was “abnormal.” Usually, he said, “when you assume power by election, you normally have between 30 and 45 days in which the team is carefully crafted and you have an opportunity to float names. Under the present circumstances, it would be more fair for the public to really assess the team based on its performance.”

He said there was a great need to quickly appoint secretaries for the interior, justice, finance, and defense departments, to name a few.

Besides, he said, “I have not seen any real survey that indicate any great anxiety about the Cabinet. A lot of the comment is on specific people. You measure whether the public is happy about the Cabinet in large surveys.”

Moreover, Dominguez said, the appointments would be under “continuous review” and that the Congress will have the opportunity to determine whether the appointments are acceptable.

Dominguez belongs to the powerful and rich Dominguez clan in Mindanao. His brother, Carlos, was Ramos’ agriculture secretary. Dominguez’s family is into agribusiness and property development. They own or run, among others, the Marco Polo, Mindanao’s largest hotel. He is married to an Alcantara, another rich and powerful clan in Mindanao with vast property and landholdings, among them the Alsons plywood company which maintains tree plantations in Mindanao. These plantations have allegedly  encroached into the ancestral land of indigenous communities.

Her Own Mind

For his part, Jesus Dureza, the presidential assistant for Southern Mindanao and concurrent director of the Mindanao Economic Development Council, told Bulatlat.com that the criticism against the Ramos or de Villa appointees “is not valid.”

“She has her own mind and I think she did look around. She was pressed for time and I don’t think she could afford to gamble in inexperienced people. She wanted to hit the ground running and maybe she was just looking for people who have the experience,” he said.

“What's negative about being identified with Ramos?” Dureza, the former president’s spokesman, said. “Everything about Ramos is positive, but maybe I’m just biased. But people have very short memory on the Ramos presidency. They just have to remember how Ramos really brought the Philippines up front. I'm proud to be in the Ramos team, and I’d like to really do more under the Arroyo team. Frankly, she’s got the best of FVR on her team,” he said.

Dureza pleaded to Arroyo’s critics to give her and the Cabinet a break. “We’d like to do something and I hope they reserve their criticisms for later. Give her a little time.”

President Arroyo, in various interviews, has said that she picked her Cabinet members for their “integrity, honesty and competence.”

This was echoed by Solita Monsod, the senatorial candidate who served as Economic Planning chief during the time of Aquino. "It's a totally competent team. There is no question about their integrity," she said.

Search Committee

Bill Luz, the executive director of the Makati Business Club that initially complained about the appointments, said that they were not actually critical of the appointees. “Our concern was the selection process. We had been told that there's a search committee. That's all we wanted to verify.”

This process, he said, primarily involves vetting the names of the appointees. “The process is important. All we wanted was transparency,” Luz said.

Although the search committee was activated, only about seven of the hundred or so it shortlisted have been appointed.

Luz, meanwhile, thinks that the criticism against Ramos and de Villa was immaterial. “It doesn’t matter where they came from. Competence and honesty are the hallmarks that we look for,” he said.

Asked about the view that Arroyo was not in control of the appointments, Luz replied: “No doubt Mrs. Arroyo was in control. The question has never been about control but about process.”

-- Carlos H. Conde