“SARA QUITS CABINET IN BREAK WITH MARCOS” – Inquirer headline. In her resignation letter, VP Sara Duterte said “she will continue her ‘services’ and ‘projects’ as Vice President. Her track record as Education Secretary includes (1) removing all educational signages in all classrooms; (2) requesting for millions of confidential funds and actually spending such funds in millions of pesos in 11 days; and (3) she even served in the NTF-ELCAC, the red tagging government body that has been causing the killing of activists working for pro-people and pro-environment causes, aside from spreading fear on citizens crying out for good governance issues.
In addition, while likewise serving as Vice President, (4) she was conspicuously silent on the PNP’s weak and incompetent apprehension of fugitives from the law, such as Pastor Quiboloy (self-appointed Son of God) accused of sex trafficking, as did the US’ FBI, the killers of the Radio Broadcaster Percy Lapid, and Congressman Teves for his alleged crime in the killing of Mayor Degamo; (5) keeping silent on China’s ongoing aggressive attacks on our sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea; and most telling, (6) she claimed she’ll continue her “malasakit” for the teachers and children, but while already holding on as Education Secretary, she failed to spend much of her education budget to address the lack of school classrooms and had no concrete plans to upgrade the level of the students’ learnings in Science, Math, Language, Creativity and Critical Thinking – an urgent and important focus given our poor standing compared with other countries in the field of grade and high school education.
That Education Secretary Sara Duterte really failed in carrying out her very important mandate of raising the education standards for our children and youth only showed her incompetence and dishonesty. We can only guess that her failure as Education Secretary was in her misguided concentration on getting millions of pesos as confidential funds, and apparently such funds in her mind harked back to her time as Davao City Mayor when she ably supported the bloody Tokhang Operations under the War on Drugs program of her father and his police chief then, Bato de la Rosa.
Thus, it was her best move to resign as a member of the Cabinet, particularly holding such a highly important and critical portfolio beyond her competence. And perhaps, as she has practically hinted her not seeing eye-to-eye with her Uniteam partner-president, she may still find her bearings to handle her job as Vice President independently, shedding off her incompetence and dishonesty as a public servant. Of course, given her dismal track record as Davao City Mayor, and as Education Secretary, which have been sadly quite detrimental to the country, we can only hope she is able to make a turn-around and truly serve the people. She just made her best move yet. But can the people trust her next move?
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