Valte: We serve at the pleasure of the President

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte: No worries. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA,Philippines—After her colleague quit the Cabinet, Undersecretary Abigail Valte said Friday that her fate in government was all up to her boss, President Aquino.

“I will go wherever the President asks me to go,’’ the deputy presidential spokesperson said at a news briefing. “It is true that we do serve at the pleasure of the President.’’

Valte was responding to questions of whether she would follow the lead of Strategic Communications Secretary Ricky Carandang, who has resigned irrevocably to return to the private sector.

Valte said she had always been up front with the President on the matter of her stint in the government.

“And I’ve always told him that I will stay here as long as I can help,’’ she said.

In the early years of the administration, Valte, Carandang and Secretary Edwin Lacierda initially alternated every week to brief reporters on the President’s policies and statements on issues, as well as the goings-on in Malacañang.

Eventually, Carandang, a former ABS-CBN newsreader, worked behind the scenes to strategize communications for the President, leaving the job of speaking to the press mostly to Lacierda and Valte. He, however, continued to speak on certain issues.

In October, following the flap over the communications group’s handling of the Disbursement Acceleration Program, a conduit for pork barrel, Secretary Herminio Coloma gradually took over their job as the President’s spokesperson.

With Carandang’s resignation, Coloma’s head office, the Presidential Communications Operations Office, issued a press release describing him as “press secretary.’’

Lacierda and Valte claimed that they had not seen a copy of Carandang’s resignation letter.  But both were consistent in saying Carandang wanted to return to the private sector.

Sources said his resignation was an offshoot of his occasional differences with the President.

“I did not get that sense,’’ Valte said when asked if Carandang had lost the President’s trust. “If you’re asking me as an observer, as someone who has seen both men at work with each other, that is not something that I would observe.’’

“At least as far as the conversation I had with Secretary Carandang earlier, is that he felt it was time, really, to go back to the private sector. It’s been three years and close to six months that he served with us. There are things that you know that it’s time to go back,’’ she said.

After all, they’re not career public servants, Valte said.

Valte said Carandang was not offered other government posts.

“I understand that he tendered an irrevocable resignation. I did ask him. I also did not see the letter that was submitted by Secretary Carandang but I did have occasion to ask him, and he said that he did submit an irrevocable resignation,’’ she said.