SOMEONE ELSE'S WINDOWS: Good riddance

Source: MindaNews

MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 22 June) - After almost two years of Vice President Sara Duterte as Secretary nothing has changed in the Department of Education - no significant policy shifts that would lift the country's education system from its miserable lot.

Indeed, Duterte can cite no tangible achievements as Education secretary. Except perhaps for those toothbrush drills? Well, we the taxpayers shouldn't expect anything from somebody who is neither an academician nor educator by any stretch of the imagination.

Her resignation, therefore, was neither a loss nor a shock. It's a welcome relief even, like rain after a prolonged drought, granting her successor proves to be an excellent choice.

What's surprising isn't that she resigned but rather that it took this long, that it didn't happen right after the anti-Marcos "Maisug" rallies led by members of her family, which had brought into open the cracks within Team Unity.

I'd conjecture that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. allowed Duterte to stay in the Cabinet not because he was hoping to patch things up between their camps; he allowed her to stay because he knew she would fail as Education secretary, something he could capitalize on when the day of reckoning arrives.

Another possible reason is that Marcos didn't want to appear vindictive despite the public insults hurled against him by the Vice President's father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, and her brother, Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte. The President bided his time, knowing the final break would come.

Whatever the[ir] reasons and motivations, both are to blame, the President for awarding the Education portfolio to somebody who was bound to fail, the Vice President for clinging on to that Cabinet post despite her incompetence to run it.