CABINET MEN, SENIOR OFFICIALS WHO WILL SUPPORT ADMINISTRATION CANDIDATES SHOULD ALSO RESIGN – BINAY

PRESS RELEASE
24 SEPTEMBER 2009
REF: JOEY SALGADO

Cabinet members and other ranking officials of the Arroyo administration who will express their support for administration candidates should also be asked to resign, Makati Mayor and United Opposition (UNO) president Jejomar C. Binay said.

“If Malacanang wants to show a professional Cabinet and a professional bureaucracy that is focused only on their work, then it should also ask for the resignation of those who will support administration candidates,” he said.

“Cabinet members are alter egos of the President in terms of policy, not necessarily politics. But the problem is the Arroyo administration is a practitioner of group-think, and will not tolerate independent minds,” he said.

Binay said by not resigning, appointed government officials who have expressed support for the candidates of Mrs. Arroyo will again be in a position to use the formidable resources of the national government for election purposes.

“We will be looking at a possible replay of 2004, when everything – from fertilizer funds to road user’s tax – were utilized for the presidential campaign of Mrs. Arroyo,” he said.

The opposition leader earlier said cracks are now starting to show at the Cabinet level, and that defections from the local to the national level will transform Malacanang into “a lonely place” after the Nov. 30 deadline for the filing of certificates of candidacy.

Palace officials had asked Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo to resign after he said he was supporting Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. It has also been reported that Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. intends to run for president.

“No one wants to be identified with an administration that is distrusted by the people, and an administration candidate who has pledged six more years of hunger, poverty, political repression and abuse of authority,” he said.