‘Fixing the Foundations’ (2)
Vice President Sara Duterte served as the 53rd Secretary of Education, and her inclusive term was from June 30, 2022 to July 19, 2024. But even before 2024 set in, Sara and her erstwhile teammate at “UniTeam” for the 2022 presidential elections, President Marcos, were already showing cracks in their erstwhile formidable “united” team, with Sara slowly disclosing unpleasant exchanges between her and the First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos. Her official resignation in July 2024 was preceded by her resignation as part of Cabinet committees, especially of the security cluster. It can be recalled she was the vice chair of the committee that provided oversight on the National Task Force to End Communist Armed Conflict.
For almost two years, Sara was at the helm of a department that is supposed to be headed by someone who has extensive experience in education governance, especially in basic education. But her main qualifications, according to her then partymate and ally and then newly elected President Marcos was that she is “a mother, and therefore is highly qualified to become the head of the Department of Education.” This begs the question: is being a mother the main qualification of a DepEd secretary? But why Sara, of all the million mothers in the country? I thought then that all mothers, especially the poor ones who have struggled hard to ensure that their children get a good education are more than qualified than VP Sara. In her case, she did not have to work hard to send her children to the best schools as her family could afford it.
Rent-seeking political dynamics give rise to such decisions of the Chief Executive of the country. It is a part of the usual horse-trading among power-hungry politicians who even go to the extent of switching or merging political parties just to ensure their access to power is sustained.
VP Sara’s stint at the DepEd was short, but it was long in terms of anomalous transactions that were exposed only after a series of investigative hearings of the quad committee in both houses of Congress. For instance, it only took 11 days for her and her underlings in the DepEd to spend P125 million for expenses related to a “confidential” fund. When Sara was pressured to rationalize this anomaly, she turned ballistic and refused to appear subsequently in the hearings, saying that it was just an act of “political harassment.” In her stead, she sent some documents. Among these was the spurious receipt signed by a fictitious individual, with a strange name—Mary Grace Piattos.
But it is also a source of endless speculations on why the DepEd, with Sara at the helm, was provided a confidential fund of P125 million. That was a substantial amount of money that could have been spent more judiciously to address the perennial lack of classrooms, teachers, and needed facilities to make learning more conducive to young pupils and students. It is here where Mr. Marcos as the Chief Executive, should have exercised his power to disapprove questionable financial requests, even from his close allies like Sara at that time.
Bribery is no longer shocking news to many of us in the education sector. We hear of teachers who encourage bribery by asking students to contribute to the publication of a research report, with the assurance that students who have contributed will be exempted from attending regular classes and answering periodical examinations. This is quite disconcerting since the teaching profession carries with it the responsibility of educating students on desirable behavioral norms, with honesty being considered the “best policy.”
How can a learning facilitator teach these values when she has allowed the normalization of dishonest and criminal behavior like bribery?
This also reminds us of a famous quoted statement from no less than VP Sara. As she was reported to have said, honesty is not important in politics because politicians are liars anyway.
Corruption and bribery are just a few of the many practices that have weakened our educational institutions. Such irregularities are quite intractable and have become embedded in the system that just “fixing” its foundations is not enough.
What we truly need is not a retrofit; we need to rebuild this system, overhaul it, and rid it of its rotten parts. Perhaps we can start by reforming our electoral system to ensure only the “best and the brightest” and most honest become elected to national positions too.
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rcguiam@gmail.com
