It seemed that our new President, the tough-talking Duterte Harley, based on his statements and actions, would have none of those secret groups of roguish shadow advisers known as kitchen Cabinet.
You know, the kind famous in the administration of Tita Cory as the “Council of Trent” or in the administration of the man named Band…Wrist Band…as the “midnight Cabinet!”
Such was the view in big business, as influential organizations tried to assess and react to the choices of Duterte Harley for his new Cabinet.
At one point, by the way, the number of “regular” Cabinet positions in the just-concluded Aquino (Part II) administration reached a peak of 35 plus about six “other Cabinet-rank officials.”
Just imagine the headache of Duterte Harley in filling up that many Cabinet positions, considering he had only a small circle of “trusted” friends and classmates, to begin with!
Admittedly, groups like the mining sector or even the construction industry might bicker that certain key members of the new Cabinet seemed to be rather impulsive picks, potentially becoming the weak links in his official chain.
The name of Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar would quickly come to mind, since his family’s real estate company had development projects in more than 80 cities and towns all over the country crying for government projects.
Immediately, the business community, through the stock market, sounded the alarm bells for “conflict of interest,” with the price of stocks of the Villar companies suddenly zooming up to the sky.
The same should be true in the case of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Regina Paz Lopez, aka Gina Lopez, a member of the loaded Lopez clan, who, four years ago in 2012, crossed swords with the entire mining sector.
Reports said that, at the onset, Duterte Harley wanted to give the DENR portfolio to any nominee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, and when the plan fizzled off, he trained his sights on recruiting a former ranking military officer.
The latest I heard was that Duterte Harley wooed a Filipino scientist who had an ongoing engagement at Harvard University, who, however, begged off for the time being because of his commitment in the prestigious US institution.
It seemed therefore that Lopez was not even in the lineup of possible heads for one critical executive department like the DENR.
From what I gathered, the BIR commissioner, lawyer Ceasar Dulay, was also not the original choice of Duterte Harley, since Dulay hardly had any background in taxation law, having been in the legal unit of the Philippine Airlines.
The first choice was actually Jesus Clint Arenas, the tax expert from SGV, the accounting firm that became the local version of the US group Ernst and Young, who was relegated to being BIR deputy commissioner for legal.
Anyway, the biggest problem of the Duterte administration over the appointment of the fanatical anti-mining Lopez would be the prevailing view in the business community on her competence—or the lack of it.
For instance, the former head of the UP National Institute of Geological Sciences (NIGS), Carlo Arcilla, said Lopez was “simply not qualified,” considering her lack of scientific training, which she often revealed in her statements on the mining sector.
Lopez reportedly said that, contrary to the statements of Duterte Harley, there was no such thing as “responsible” mining in this world, because mining was a biggest reason behind poverty in the country.
In other words, to Lopez, mining was bad, period. And so incompetence became the latest battle cry against her.
Arcilla noted that, contrary to her claim that all mining sites were poor areas (implying that mining caused the poverty), “mineralized” land would not be fit for any kind of agriculture.
He also insisted that studies had shown how the thousands of mining jobs in the country actually saved hundreds of families from poverty.
In Mindanao alone, home base of Duterte Harley, where his administration wanted to push for rapid growth, various local and foreign companies already invested more than $17 billion in the mining sector.
What would happen to those investments?
That estimate did not even include the billions of pesos in coal-fired power plants that Lopez also wanted to eliminate from the face of earth—or at least the piece of earth occupied by the Philippines.
Advanced countries like Germany were still very much into coal power plants.
And so the business community turned to the issue of “conflict of interest” involving Lopez, and her wealthy clan, as a reaction to her recent statements regarding a possible ban on coal power plants.
As we all know, the Lopez clan had huge interests in the rather expensive “renewable” power, such as geothermal, wind, and solar power facilities, or even natural gas plants.
The government gave subsidies to “renewable” energy through the so-called Feed-in Tariff, or FIT, to help defray the high cost of renewable energy estimated at P8.70 per kwh, versus the low cost of coal plants at P3 per kwh.
Insisting that coal power plants produced “dirty” energy, Lopez reportedly vowed to review all permits issued by the Aquino (Part II) administration, which of course made the business sector even more nervous of the DENR under her.
The latest in an apparent demolition job on Lopez was of course the revival of the COA report on the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission (PRRC), which she headed as a real government official under the Aquino (Part II) administration.
It seemed that the COA report had shown that, under Lopez, the PRRC bungled its program to clean up the Pasig River, as millions of pesos worth of recycling equipment were rendered as “junk,” i.e. wasted, because Lopez decided to purchase the equipment well in advance.
Did the Duterte administration really want the problem called Gina Lopez this early?