Duterte won’t appoint new Budget chief until 2022
Credit to Author: CATHERINE S. VALENTE, TMT| Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2019 02:13:49 +0000
SAN FERNANDO CITY, Pampanga: President Rodrigo Duterte is not keen on appointing a permanent head of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) until the end of his term in 2022.
The President shunned the idea of making a “regular” appointment for the Cabinet post vacated by now Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Gov. Benjamin Diokno in March, in a situation briefing here on Tuesday.
“She has spent her lifetime counting the money and dividing it among us,”
Duterte said, referring to Budget Undersecretary Janet Abuel, who serves now as the department’s officer-in-charge (OIC).
“So I am not appointing a new — a regular appointment. Si ma’am will just act as OIC until in God’s time matapos ako three years. Three years lang naman ma’am (I will finish my terms in three years). It’s just three years ma’am),” he added.
The President said in the same meeting on the situation in Pampanga after the magnitude 6.1 earthquake, that the problems of the government were related to money.
“Anyway, it’s not so devastating if I would say the word, but it is a problem for us; and the fact that we are assembled here talking about it,” Duterte said.
“At the end of the day, it boils down to money. Maski anong problema sa gobyerno, it boils down to the lady there at the end of the table,” he added.
Duterte also indicated that an acting secretary would no longer have to secure the nod of the powerful Commission on Appointments.
Abuel, a lawyer and a certified public accountant, was first named as acting secretary of the DBM on March 5 after Diokno replaced then BSP chief Nestor Espenilla Jr. who succumbed to cancer in February.
She was promoted as DBM assistant secretary and eventually as undersecretary in 2018.
A Bar topnotcher, Abuel holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, and a master of laws degree from the University of Sydney in Australia.
When Abuel was named to lead the DBM as OIC, the Palace said she got the top post due to “competence, integrity, and expertise.”
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