MANILA – Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, who has joined most of President Duterte’s foreign trips, will be the new secretary of foreign affairs, the President said Wednesday.
Fielding reporters’ questions before he flew to Cambodia, Duterte said he had just signed the appointment letter of Cayetano, who led the 16-man Philippine delegation that presented the country’s position in Monday’s (May 8) Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Cayetano’s name had long been floated among those interested in the DFA portfolio, but he was covered by the one-year ban on election losers being appointed to Executive posts. Cayetano ran for vice president in the May 9, 2016 elections as Duterte’s running mate, but lost.
Duterte was pressed at Wednesday’s pre-departure press conference to name who among the May 2016 election losers will land positions in his Cabinet, with the lapse of the one-year ban last May 9.
In a statement issued afterwards, the DFA expressed its congratulations through its Twitter account.
“We look forward to working with him, and the Department is now preparing to ensure a smooth institutional transition and to continue providing our services to the public,” the DFA said.
Before naming Cayetano, the President announced he had picked Armed Forces Chief of Staff Eduardo M. Año as the next DILG secretary.
On Monday, Cayetano told the UN in Geneva that there was “no new wave of killings in the Philippines, just a political tactic of changing definitions.”
This was after the Duterte administration had come under fire from various foreign governments and organizations for his campaign against drugs.
Cayetano had reported that there had been 9,432 homicide cases since Duterte took office in June 2016. This number included 2,692 deaths from “presumed legitimate law enforcement operations”. With a report by Tricia Aquino, InterAksyon
