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Friday, March 29, 2024

Short shrift

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Sabi nang tama na, Gina.

Now ugly truths about her fitness to be a member of the Cabinet are coming out of the woodwork.  I won’t mention these any longer; Senator Ping, in a moment of pique, already said some.

That is why there are executive sessions.  Members of the Commission on Appointments do not want to embarrass nominees by bringing out rather unpleasant things about one’s past in open hearings.

Considering further how the media conglomerate her family controls had been unabashedly promoting her confirmation and damning all who oppose her, deliberating and voting in secret was just proper.

For far too long, some media organizations have believed they could dictate the agenda of the nation.  They did not contemplate having a Digong as president of the land.

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After having been rejected last week, Madam Regina went on a media offensive in the vain hope that she could yet “rule from the grave,” pressuring the President to appoint himself as DENR secretary, with her as undersecretary.  She just couldn’t bear to leave her post with grace and class.  Neither I suppose the 55 consultants she brought with her, and the gaggle of blinders-endowed crusaders for the environment who like her would brook no opposition to the “A, basta” syndrome.

So on Monday night, when she was commiserating with the “crusaders” who chained themselves in front of the DENR building, she found to her utter dismay that she had been given short shrift by the President.  Roy Cimatu, former AFP Chief of Staff and currently special envoy to the Middle East, was named to her post.

Ruling from the political grave was thus thrashed.  For all we know, Cimatu was being groomed for another important post, as the President intimated before the OFW community in his Middle Eastern trip, but with the denouement at the CA and the engineered post-mortem paeans to Madam Regina, the political noise had to be immediately quelled.

Short shrift, indeed.

* * *

The other lesson that wannabes for government posts may have gleaned from the President’s actions of late is that he disdains pressure from propaganda ploys or media plays. 

Look at the appointment of Nesting Espenilla to the Bangko Sentral governorship.  The guy remained as humble and unassuming as he had always been. No public pronouncements about qualifications, nor endorsements by political parties, no media blitz.

The guy didn’t even salivate for the job.  A deeply religious person from the island of San Jacinto in Masbate, he just continued what he has been doing very well as the BSP’s chief banking regulator.

It helped of course that both outgoing BSP Gov. Tetangco and DoF Secretary Sonny Dominguez wanted someone from the BSP’s career officials, whether the equally qualified Diwa Gunigundo or Nesting, to occupy what the DoF Secretary described as the most important appointment by the President.

* * *

 While nobody seriously gave a young upstart with no established political party a chance to become Presidente de la France months before, Emmanuel Macron has become, at 39, the duly elected leader of this great nation.

And with the flair of a true Frenchman, Macron chose to celebrate his election victory at the Place de la Louvre, with the iconic glass pyramid as backdrop.

The choice of Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as some kind of triumphal anthem was inspired as it was an obvious signal that France would continue to be a major mover of the European Union.

But Macron faces a daunting task.  He has to confront the problems plaguing his country with the same daring and determination that Charles de Gaulle did when faced with political crises.  Macron’s challenge is more economic than political, but he has to move with the same audacity and daring that de Gaulle employed to inspire his people.

Remember what Danton exclaimed: “L’audace, encore l’audace, toujours de l’audace!” (We must dare, dare again, always dare!”).

For if the young Macron fails to reverse the gears of an ailing economy, and give renewed hope to the millennials who rallied around his nouvelle politique, the always skeptical French would taunt their political fate and quote Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” (the more things change, the more they remain the same).

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