Farm expert appointed agriculture secretary
MANILA: A senior Malacanang Palace official on Monday disclosed that President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte has appointed a renowned farm expert as the new chief of the Department of Agriculture.
In his text message of media outfits, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea confirmed Duterte’s appointment of William Dar as the new agriculture chief in an acting capacity to replace Emmanuel “Manny” Pinol who was appointed head of the Mindanao Development Authority (Minda).
Neophyte Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, a close Duterte ally and the former presidential assistant, also confirmed in a separate statement the appointment of Dar who is to return to his old post when he served as the agriculture secretary of then president and former Manila mayor Joseph Estrada from 1998 to 1999.
Dar is widely acknowledged by his peers as an expert in the field of horticulture and whose latest stint was as the chief of the International Cente efor Research in the Semi-arid Tropics based in India from 1999 to 2014.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez also welcomed Dar’s appointment, saying: “William Dar has the educational qualifications, domestic and international experience in the field of agriculture.”
But before his appointment of Dar, Duterte was quoted as saying he was considering the possibility of naming a retired senior military officer as the replacement of Pinol as the agriculture chief.
Duterte has been widely criticised for his appointment of retired top military officers and thus, “militarising” the bureaucracy, but the president stood firm on his decision pointing out he needed their services in the fight against corruption.
Earlier, Pinol admited he offered to resign as the agriculture chief and asked the president to appoint him to Minda, the government agency tasked to supervise and hasten development in Southern Philippines.
Duterte also said he needed Pinol as his “point man in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)) and there is nobody on my side talking to BARMM to make necessary arrangements for the entity to grow and their needs.”