For all the right reasons? Maybe
October might just turn out to be an auspicious month for the agriculture industry. To begin with, October is the month when the industry’s trade show AGRILINK is held annually, and it happens this weekend starting Thursday, Oct. 5 up to Saturday, Oct. 7.
Aside from the trade show, rumors and speculative news reports have started to circulate that PBBM has trimmed down his choice for a permanent secretary of agriculture. More recent reports claim that the frontrunner is a Filipino-Chinese businessman whose family is an industry leader in deep-sea fishing and was a serious campaign contributor to PBBM’s presidency.
Unfortunately, Malacañang has the historical bad habit of not informing the public of potential candidates for Cabinet positions, so everything is always “Maritess alerts” or gossip. In the US and other countries, the practice is to float the name, send the candidate out to talk to potential constituents or appear in media programs in order to gauge his or her abilities as well as acceptability to stakeholders.
Whoever gets appointed and is insane enough to accept the DA leadership will be going to hell and back. Mountains we can climb, but Philippine agriculture has become a hell hole with many demons who won’t be willing to let go of their foothold on agricultural smuggling, hoarding, price manipulations, etc. That does not even include the systemic corruption and broken culture in the various agencies of the department.
Someone asked what I thought of the possible candidates for the DA. My answer is what I used as todays’ column title. If the future DA secretary is doing it for all the right reasons, maybe! The WHY, as they say, determines the how and the outcomes. If the candidate thinks he can solve the problems of Philippine agriculture, he is doomed. The man who has all the answers or believes in his inherent skills in the private sector finds out soon enough that government and vested interests are as unwieldy as a dozen venomous snakes.
The candidate should get the President’s unequivocal support and trust put in writing, cast in stone and share it on the “cloud” because without that level of trust and support, the President’s friends,
