All appointed officials serve at the pleasure and confidence of the President.
Friends, townmates, classmates or fraternity “brods” who serve under him should go if they falter in their steps, whether it be their fault or someone else’s.
Loyalty to country and the Filipino people should always take precedence in the Duterte administration.
That’s why being President is a lonely job.
* * *
There is a story about how seriously Japanese officials take their job.
It tells of a beat policeman in a small town in Japan who raped a housewife.
His immediate supervisor committed hara-kiri (suicide) over the incident while the town’s police chief resigned.
The offending cop’s immediate superior and the police chief didn’t have anything to do with the rape.
For all we know, the story may be an urban legend but it shows the strong sense of delicadeza among the Japanese.
If I speak in riddles, forgive me.
I happen to have Japanese blood so I told this story.
* * *
People who want the Philippines to go to war with China over its deployment of weapons on a territory both countries are claiming are out of their minds.
It’s like a dog running after a passing car that it thinks trespassed on its territory.
You see, canines are territorial.
Should that dog catch up with the car, what then?
In the same way, granting we have rights over the islands, so what?
Can we back up our rights with the might of our military?
You want us to be pulverized by China over a group of islands which we laid claim to only in the mid-’70s?
* * *
The group of islands we now call Kalayaan was “discovered” by explorer Tomas Cloma during his nautical school ship’s trip to South China Sea in the 1950s.
He called the islands Freedomland.
Cloma and his group were driven away by the Chinese Navy after they laid claim to Freedomland by occupying it.
The government in the 1950s didn’t take notice of Cloma’s “discovery” and occupation of Freedomland, taking him for a Don Quixote.
President Marcos took notice of the claim in the 1970s after Cloma, who was already very old, insisted on the country’s ownership of the islands because he occupied these, albeit for a short period.
And since Cloma is a citizen of the Philippines, Marcos said the country has a right to the islands.
Why do I know all this? Because I was a sub-editor or deskman at the Philippines News Agency when there was a hullabaloo over the country’s claim to the islands in the mid-’70s.
* * *
The country should do everything short of spiriting out of Kuwait our diplomats who rescued distressed Filipino maids.
Those guys who are now holing up at the Philippine Embassy did what they had to do because their compatriots were in dire straits.
They were also just obeying the orders of Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano.
Not that Cayetano should be blamed either.