Duterte eyes Briones, Diokno for education, budget; nothing for Leni yet

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte. (May 28, 2016, Photo by Karlos Manlupig, INQUIRER MINDANAO

DAVAO CITY – Incoming President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday night he still had no Cabinet post to offer to Vice President-elect Leni Robredo.
“Why should I talk to her? I have not considered anything for her because I’m more worried about where I would place the friends na nagkautang ako ng loob (to whom I owe a debt of gratitude),” Duterte said in a press briefing late Saturday evening.

“I am not ready to offer anything to her,” he said.

But Duterte announced that he was offering the education secretary post to University of the Philippines professor Leonor Briones.

Duterte said Briones “is very quite familiar” with the problem in the education sector, particularly in the implementation of the K to 12 program, wherein “a lot of children will be marginalized and will not be able to enrol and a good number of teachers will lose their positions.”

Duterte also said he was offering Benjamin Diokno the Department of Budget post.

He said Diokno has held the position “of budget secretary for many Presidents.”

Vice President-elect Leni Robredo attends the Sagrada Familia fluvial procession in Camarines Sur on May 28, 2016. (Photo release  of the Leni Robredo Media Bureau)

Duterte also defended his choices of people who will be part of his Cabinet, saying these were his own decisions.

“I am trying to explain or retort to these accusations that these are classmates, my friends…that is a very stupid allegation,” Duterte said.

Duterte said he could have chosen from “a large portion of the population,” but he could only choose among people he personally knew, whose personalities and characters he understood.

“My horizon … is limited to school, dormitory, friends and (fraternity) brothers,” he said.

“You have to know the person and know the character,” he said of his choices, but stressed that many of his new appointees were not his “childhood friends.”  SFM

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