WITH all certainty, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is one of the most important agencies in the government. Its wide scope makes it doubly crucial as DENR’s mandate is not limited to issuing closure orders on destructive businesses.
Lately, we’ve been receiving reports that a significant number of officials, which include Undersecretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Regional Directors and career officials, have been demoralized by the way Environment Secretary Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga has been treating them.
Some of them are even considering the idea of quitting their posts or filing a leave of absence to avoid being dragged by the issues hounding the Secretary herself.
According to sources, Yulo-Loyzaga has been showing signs of being easily irritated days after reports of an imminent congressional probe came out in the major dailies.
These news reports delved on what has been claimed as an appointment shrouded by a conflict of interest between her mandate and family business interest over a 40,000-hectare hacienda spanning the towns of Coron and Busuanga in the province of Palawan.
Referred to as the Yulo King Ranch, the vast tract of public land, has long been a subject of distribution to some 1,000 farmer beneficiaries under the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
Interestingly, the emancipation has been stalled since she became the DENR Secretary in July last year.
In fairness, Yulo-Loyzaga has every reason to do what is expected of her after the Manila Regional Trial Court appointed her as the executor of the Yulo King Ranch, which forms part of the long list of inherited properties left by their dad (late crony Luis Yulo) to the Yulo siblings.
Caught between mandate and family duty, Yulo-Loyzaga must decide which one to keep – being the DENR Secretary or being the executor of the family estate. She can’t keep both.
For one, the position she accepted requires full time. As the famous line goes – we can’t do two things at the same time because our brains can only focus on one task at a time. Yulo-Loyzaga is supposed to do the balancing act of developing and utilizing natural wealth while protecting and caring for the environment and not between her mandate and that of her family's business interest.
Number two, keeping both is a conflict of interest, especially in the midst of the administration’s heightened drive for food security, for which the President ordered the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to fast track the distribution of land to the farmers.
From how it looks, she is “torn between two lovers,” and she doesn’t seem to know what to do. As a result, things are so ineffective and inefficient at the DENR.
With an imminent PR nightmare hounding the DENR, we were told that the Presidential Communications Office came to her rescue and took over the tall order of damage control in view of an impending congressional probe.
If there's still a little decency left under her sleeves, Yulo-Loyzaga should resign because that is the right thing to do.
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