After receiving a tongue-lashing from President Rodrigo Duterte for criticizing his penchant in appointing retired military officials to Cabinet positions, Senator Richard Gordon on Saturday admitted he was ready to be ousted as Blue Ribbon Committee chairman.
The BRC or the Committee on Public Accountability of Public Officers is the most powerful committee in the Senate which investigates alleged wrongdoings of the government, its officials, and its attached agencies, including government, owned and controlled corporations.
“If the majority (in the Senate) will be used to remove me, I will go where I can make a difference,” said Gordon when informed that he might be replaced in the BRC.
Gordon said one should not worry to avoid being scared. He warned there would be “blind obedience”- acceding even to a wrong order if one became afraid.
If that will be the case, Gordon said he would just backtrack and do a different role.
“I cannot do what I was asked to do. If you do not like what I’m doing, it’s their right to fire me,” said Gordon in an interview over dwIZ on Saturday, heard nationwide.
Gordon said he was never involved in any wrongdoing unlike the others, but everything was just temporary, including being a senator.
He recalled having been removed from Subic Bay Authority when he still wanted to do a lot of things.
Gordon got a dose of the President’s expletives-peppered tirades when he rebuked Duterte’s appointment of retired Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Salamat, former chief of the Armed Forces Northern Luzon Command, as Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) board member last July 29.
He considered “dangerous” the president’s militarization of the Cabinet, stressing that civilian authority must remain supreme over the military.
He pointed out that military officials should be retired for three years before getting appointed to a government post “to remove the ties that bind.”
Gordon added: “The only problem with the President, his bench is shallow. He comes from the province, he doesn’t know people, so he relies on the military.”
Duterte on Thursday night lashed out at Gordon for commenting on his choice of former military officials, even calling him a “smart ass and stupid.”
The President also poked fun on his looks, saying that his belly looked like a tadpole and his walks like a penguin.
He also told Gordon to drop his ambition to become vice president because he would make sure he would not become one.
Worse, the President told the senator who might be seeking a second term in the 2022 elections or running for higher office that he was just “a fart away from disaster.”
In a statement issued after the President’s cursing him during the 28th founding anniversary of the Bureau of Fire Protection in Pasay City, Gordon said he took no offense as everyone was entitled to an opinion, and “we cannot be onion-skinned about such things.”
He also said that he was happy that the chief executive was concerned about his weight and that “he need not worry about that” as his wife “has seen to it that I have reduced it significantly of late.”
The senator added he made his remarks about Duterte’s appointments of retired military officials “in good faith and out of concern for our country and the President.”
“I also have great respect for the military and the armed forces because they are the protector of the people and the State,” he said.
Saturday, Gordon was all praises for the President, saying he was intelligent enough.
“I don't think he is dumb, dumb. I don’t think he is….” said Gordon.
Among Duterte’s appointees who are retired military officials are Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu; Social Welfare Secretary Rolando Bautista, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Gregorio Honasan, TESDA chief Isidro Lapeña, Bases and Conversion Development Authority chief Glorioso Miranda, HUDCC chairperson Eduardo del Rosario, MMDA chair Danilo Lim, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez and Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero.