EDITORIAL - Strange appointments

In a country of close to a hundred million people, one of the things that comes to mind is there couldn't be a dearth of talented, trustworthy, respectable and uncompromised individuals who can be appointed to important positions in government.

That, however, is all up to the appointing power. If, for example, President Aquino stays true to his mantra about keeping to the straight and narrow, then he should find no difficulty in making qualified and clean appointments. There's plenty to choose from.

But Aquino is fond of tapping only those from his limited pool of friends, or those they favor and recommend. This can pose some problems with the rest of Filipinos, who may not feel comfortable with the thought that conflict of interest, or a hidden agenda, may be involved.

Even if Aquino's appointees pass the stringent requirements necessary for them to hold important positions in government, their closeness to the president may invite suspicions which the sensitivity of their positions can ill afford to have.

It becomes worse if the appointees do not pass the criteria necessary to keep them above suspicion. This is what happened with the appointment by Aquino of Macabangkit Lanton as Comelec commissioner.

Even if Lanton comes highly qualified, his being an endorsee of a close Aquino ally makes his appointment suspect. It becomes even more intriguing now that it has come to light Lanton was once removed from office as a congressman for having benefitted from an alleged poll fraud.

A person, no matter how qualified, cannot but be a square peg in a round hole if he sits in an electoral body after having once been sanction for a poll anomaly. Surely, Aquino must have known about this. That he still went ahead and made the appointment invites suspicions.

An earlier appointee of Aquino to the same electoral agency, Grace Padaca, also invites the same suspicions. Padaca had a pending case for graft at the time of her appointment. About to be arrested, Aquino himself provided bail. This was a move that forever stays under a cloud.

All of these strange appointments do not sit well with the fact that the country is about to have an election using controversial machines, the outcome of which Aquino is predicting would be a clean 12-0 sweep for his Liberal Party's candidates for the Senate.