Cayetano feels the heat

Cayetano and his top aides for incompetence in handling the Kuwait situation. The diplomats urged the president to demand the resignation of his former running mate in the 2016 elections “to spare the Philippines from further diplomatic embarrassments.”

The charges leveled against Cayetano are undeniably serious. According to the diplomats, the Kuwait

incompetence of Cayetano and his top aides, who are now a liability to the Duterte administration.”

“Having no vision on foreign policy, Cayetano and his top aides miscalculated the Kuwaiti reaction to the controversial rescue missions of distressed Filipino housemaids,” they wrote. Cayetano’s blundering, they explained, “resulted in the expulsion of our ambassador to Kuwait, Renato Villa, who was declared by the host government.”

The diplomats blamed Cayetano for riling up the Kuwaitis as a result of the release of the controversial video showing the rescue of a Filipino domestic worker. They blamed a top assistant of Cayetano’s, Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Lou Arriola, for taking and uploading the video, which the Kuwait government said was a violation of its laws and its sovereignty

the reason for Villa’s expulsion and the recall of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Manila.

The diplomats claimed that Arriola’s only credential was her close ties to Cayetano. Arriola, who they said flunked the foreign service examinations, had “no moral ascen-

treat[s] with contempt, [in her bid] to gain publicity to advance the sluggish political career of Cayetano.”

As for Cayetano himself, his “amateurism and inexperience threaten to jeopardize the welfare of 230,000 Filipino workers in Kuwait,” the diplomats alleged. “It is a widespread belief that the Kuwaitis will not resume talks with the Philippines as long as Cayetano is the DFA secretary.”

Cayetano would do well to explain why he is not actually to blame for escalating the Kuwaiti situation because of his actions. He has already been reported to be at loggerheads publicly with Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, who has reportedly disagreed with Cayetano’s approach to the problem of the ongoing diplomatic dispute.

Indeed, only the direct intervention of Duterte himself in the Kuwait crisis has kept the situation from spinning out of control since the release by the DFA of the controversial rescue video. If Cayetano’s only contribution to solving the problem is his department’s release of the

where the senior career diplomats are coming from when they accuse him of amateurish action that has endangered the Filipinos in Kuwait.

Of course, Cayetano is not the

foreign affairs department, nor is he the only foreign secretary to be accused of not knowing what he’s doing. But I think the charges leveled against Cayetano have to do with his failure to seek the counsel

- ment, whose collective knowledge of diplomacy he can so easily access, and his over-reliance on the advice of people like Arriola, who probably know even less about diplomacy than him.

And as we learned from the misadventures of Supreme Court Chief Justice (on leave) Maria Lourdes Sereno, it is never a good idea to ignore, belittle or unduly antagonize the people you work with – especially those who may actually contribute to making you a better leader. What’s ironic is that unlike Sereno, Cayetano is a seasoned politician and shouldn’t really need a lecture from anyone on developing people skills and getting along with others.

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But like I said, Cayetano is such an easy target for the accusations now being hurled against him. For instance, you don’t need to be a distressed Filipino worker in Kuwait or a disgruntled diplomat at the DFA to have a personal beef against the DFA secretary – you just have to be a Filipino applying for a passport.

Now, I don’t know why Cayetano presumes that he can easily navigate the labyrinths of international diplomacy when he cannot even solve the problem of the backlog in the processing of passports. And if I recall correctly, it was Duterte

nation address, who railed against this festering problem that became endemic (as is the case with most problems involving basic government services) during the Aquino administration.

And when I think of how Cayetano has so miserably failed to provide passports to Filipinos who need them, I am reminded of Transportation Secretary Arturo Tugade. Yes, Tugade, the cranky old man who doesn’t talk much to the media but who has almost single-handedly solved all of the problems that Filipinos have involving his department.

Tugade and his people quietly fixed the “crisis, the lack of trains of the MRT, the twin evils of the lack of drivers’ licenses and motor vehicle license plates – mostly without fanfare and by cutting through situations that many said would take years of tedious negotiations and costly litigation to go through. And Cayetano, the boy wonder who would supposedly breathe new life into and bring boundless energy to the foreign

passport problem?

Of course, Cayetano can always count on his being close to Duterte as the latter’s former running mate and on his friends in the Senate, who will probably think twice before haling him to one of their investigations. But if he’s really as smart and as politically astute as they say he is, Cayetano knows he can’t keep going back to the same well all the time.

He will have to prove that he’s got what it takes to be an effective foreign affairs secretary. And if he can’t impress his fellow diplomats, perhaps he can win some praise from the general public by making their life easier and giving them passports (which they pay a pretty penny for, by the way) when they need them.