Palace mum on Cabinet revamp

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang is mum on possible changes in the Cabinet this year due to the resignation of Health Secretary Enrique Ona and the coming elections.

“No information on changes in the Cabinet,” Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said yesterday.

Earlier, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said President Aquino had not yet chosen a replacement for Ona, who resigned amid an investigation into the Department of Health’s questionable purchase of vaccines and other issues involving him.

Asked if Aquino already has a list of choices to replace Ona, Lacierda said: “We’ll know by next year. Right now we have no information yet. By next year, hopefully we’ll have an announcement coming forth from the Palace.”

At present, Health Undersecretary Janette Garin is serving as acting secretary.

Presidential assistant for recovery and reconstruction Panfilo Lacson will also be leaving the Cabinet as he had finished the transition work in government’s efforts to rehabilitate areas affected by Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.

Some Cabinet members are seen to be running for elective office in 2016, in which case they need to resign from their posts.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, a member of the Cabinet as housing chief and adviser on overseas Filipino workers’ concerns, said he would stay in the Cabinet or as long as the President wants him to.

There is no word yet from the presumptive standard-bearer and sentimental choice of the Liberal Party, Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II, as to his plans for 2015 and 2016.

The Palace has been saying that it will focus on the many things that still need to be done as the Aquino administration enters its fifth and penultimate year.

To institutionalize reforms, the priorities would be the passage of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) and increased government spending.

“Number one, our reform measures are ongoing. But our priority right now is the BBL. We need to pass the BBL so that we will be able to capacitate the leaders of the new juridical entity,” he said.

“Hopefully, that will be passed by first quarter, there will be a plebiscite and then during that time after the plebiscite there will be capacity building so that... by 2016, the (new) Bangsamoro Juridical Entity will be held simultaneously or be synchronized with the next elections,” he added.

As to increasing government spending, Lacierda admitted that government spending was low last year, which contributed to slower economic growth in the third quarter.