Bersamin: President has power to shuffle Cabinet

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has the power to appoint to his Cabinet candidates who lost in the national and local elections in May last year, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said on Friday.

The President on Tuesday confirmed he was planning a reorganization of his Cabinet after the constitutional ban on appointing losing candidates to government posts one year after the general elections lapsed on May 9. C

agayan De Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez had appealed to Mr. Marcos not to “recycle” candidates who lost in last year’s polls by giving them Cabinet posts.

But Bersamin said: “Appeals like that should not be made. They mean very well, but you know, there are good people, and if the President wants to replace some people in the Cabinet right now, he is within his full political power to exercise that choice.”

The Executive Secretary added that the President’s discretion on filling vacant government positions extends to individuals who are planning to run in the 2025 midterm elections.

This was after House Minority Floor Leader Marcelino Libanan also called on the President to only appoint those who have no plans to run in the next polls to ensure that they would remain focused and committed to their work for the government.

“Who are we to prohibit someone from running because they want to serve the country? Others want to serve but are not called by the President. That’s his wisdom,” said Bersamin, a former Chief Justice before Mr. Marcos tapped him to become the so-called “Little President.”

According to the 1987 Constitution, no candidate “who has lost in any election shall, within one year after such election, be appointed to any office in the Government or any government-owned or -controlled corporations or in any of their subsidiaries.”

However, the Marcos administration has at least three executive departments without permanent secretaries. The Department of Health is headed by Undersecretary and Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergiere, while the Department of National Defense is led by Senior Undersecretary Carlito Galvez Jr.

The President, meanwhile, heads the Agriculture department as its concurrent Secretary.

Rodriguez urged Mr. Marcos to “resist the temptation” of appointing or recycling candidates who lost in the May 2022 elections, with some names already surfacing in rumors as early as last year.

The Cagayan de Oro solon said if the President fills vacant Cabinet jobs, “it should not be because of the lapse of the one-year appointment ban but because there is real need for full-time Cabinet members, including one at the Department of Agriculture (DA), which is temporarily headed by the Chief Executive himself.” He added that the President should stop the practice of recycling “or rewarding defeated candidates with government positions.”

In the case of the DA, Rodriguez said the President should give way to a full-time secretary “because he has his hands already full in international relations and immediate domestic needs and problems of the country, including rising tensions in the West Philippine Sea.”

“I would recommend that the next agriculture secretary be from Mindanao, the island being the Philippines’s breadbasket. It is also high time to transfer the DA central office to Mindanao where our country’s agricultural battle ground is set,” he said.

“He should have competent people helping him. He is very fortunate that he has his principal ally in Congress, our Speaker Martin Romualdez, to rely on not only in terms of legislative and moral support but in solving problems the nation faces,” he said.

Rodriguez is the chair of the House committee on constitutional amendments. 4Ps party-list Rep. Libanan, meanwhile, said the Chief Executive should preferably pick new department secretaries who are ready to serve for the next five years.

“Our suggestion is for the President to appoint highly capable department heads who can focus entirely on their jobs until 2028, and who do not have any plans to run in the 2025 elections, which is just 24 months away,” Libanan said.

“Secretaries keen on running for office in the mid-term polls are bound to become preoccupied with partisan political activities in a matter of months,” Libanan pointed out.

He said there is nothing wrong with the President’s plan to tap individuals who ran and lost in the May 2022 elections, “as long as they are highly qualified and competent individuals, it does not matter if they lost in the previous elections, considering that the ban has already expired.” — Vince Lopez

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