Duterte creates Palace transition team

President Rodrigo Duterte. (File photo from PCOO Facebook page)

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has created a transition committee that will oversee a hopefully smooth handover of government business to the new president who will be elected next week, said presidential spokesperson Martin Andanar.

Andanar did not name the members of the presidential transition committee, except for its chair, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, who also led the Duterte transition team in 2016.

The committee is expected to start its work as soon as the president-elect names the leader of his transition committee and will last for around two months, or until the term of the Duterte administration ends on June 30.

Pressing concerns

First on the agenda of both transition committees will be the proclamation of the new president in a joint session of Congress.

But even before the proclamation, the transition team is expected to form subcommittees or clusters to deal with pressing concerns in national security and defense, economics, and foreign affairs, among others, as well as plan for the first days of the new administration.

In 2016, Duterte created his transition team the day after the election, when it was clear that he would win, although only by a plurality.

By the time Congress proclaimed him the winner of the 2016 election on May 30, Medialdea’s team had already been working for almost a month and already forming the President-elect’s Cabinet.

After the congressional proclamation, the president-elect will have around a month to form his official family, but there are no deadlines on Cabinet appointments and they can even be made after his inauguration.

Tradition

The new president will take his oath of office shortly before the expiry of Mr. Duterte’s term at noon on June 30. This has been the practice since 1992, even when there had been some rancor between the president-elect and the outgoing president.

According to that tradition, the president-elect is welcomed to Malacañan Palace by the outgoing President before noon on June 30.

After going through a brief traditional protocol, the two presidents would then ride together to the new president’s inauguration. Those would be the final moments of the outgoing president’s term.

In 2010, this tradition was modified a little when outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did not ride with then-president-elect Benigno Aquino III, but she still showed up at Aquino’s inauguration at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila.

For outgoing President Duterte, he said in February that he had already begun packing his things in Malacañang and was looking forward to the turnover.

“I await the day of turnover,” the president said. “I will also experience the feeling of an outgoing President. I will be the one to meet the new president. Then I will invite him [or her] here for a tête-à-tête, and then that’s it. When I go out of the front gate, there’s nothing more.”

The president said he would be returning to his hometown Davao City and spend his retirement there.

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