Pia lends women’s voice to Duterte team

Senator Pia Cayetano. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

DAVAO CITY—Sen. Pia Cayetano has joined the transition team  of presumptive President Rodrigo Duterte to provide a more gender-balanced  administration.

Cayetano is in the city to meet with the six-man transition team. She is completing her term in the Senate and has won election as Taguig City’s representative in Congress.

The members of the transition team are Duterte’s executive assistant Christopher Go, national campaign manager Leoncio Evasco, spokesperson Peter Laviña, campaign finance chief Carlos Dominguez, and lawyers Salvador Medialdea and Lorieto Ata, head and deputy, respectively, of the legal team.

Laviña said it was not too late to correct what he called the “unfortunate fact” that the transition team was composed of men. The team began meeting in a hotel here on Wednesday.

Cayetano, sister of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, the defeated running mate of Duterte, said she was invited to join the group to make sure women would have a voice in the new administration.

But she said women’s participation should not be measured by their actual number in the Cabinet or in key government positions.

She said that, “at the end of the day, whether it is a man or a woman occupying that top-level position, we want to be sure that person is gender sensitive.”

She said every Cabinet cluster would have a women’s voice.

“We want to see the voice of women in the economic cluster, the  infrastructure cluster,” she said.

She said the bureaucracy has many homegrown talents just waiting to be discovered, and a lot of them happen to be women.

“We have to give them that opportunity,” she said.

Cayetano cited examples of policies and programs for women in  Davao City.

These are the Women Development Code, Children and Women’s Desk in police stations, and providing lawyers for victims of violence against women, among others.

Laviña said the transition team, in a meeting on Wednesday, included women in its short list of possible officials in the Duterte administration.  He refused however to divulge who was on the list.

“We cannot announce until the mayor is proclaimed the winner,”he said.