Duterte confirms Piñol is leaving DA

FILE: Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol announces his support for supplying rice rather than providing cash allowance to the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries during a press briefing in Malacañang on January 18, 2017. TOTO LOZANO/Presidential Photo

Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol is leaving the Department of Agriculture (DA), President Rodrigo Duterte confirmed on Friday, July 5.

“I’d like to just also mention that si Secretary Piñol will be leaving the agriculture portfolio,” Duterte said at the inauguration of a rice processing center in Alangalang, Leyte.

“Hirap ako sa (I’m having difficulty in) Mindanao because we have created a new political entity there, the BOL (Bangsamoro Organic Law) or BARMM (Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao), for that matter as it is known today,” he added.

The President said he needed someone like Piñol who can help speed up the development of Mindanao.

“There seems to be a lag na nakikita ko (that I see), there’s not much activity in really trying to devolve all — all powers of the national government relevant to the existence of BARMM,” Duterte noted.

“I am not saying that they are not moving. But they are so slow that I would need a point man there in the likes of Secretary Piñol,” he continued.

Piñol has resigned from his post as Agriculture chief, according to Senator Christopher “Bong” Go last month.

In his resignation letter, Piñol asked Duterte to relieve him from his post and re-assigned him in an agency where he can be “effective” like in Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) which serves as Mindanao’s lead agency in “coordinating and integrating development efforts that bring about accelerated socio-economic development of Mindanao.”

Duterte earlier said he plans to appoint Piñol to head the MinDA, however, he had to talk first to  Bangsamoro Transition Authority interim chief minister Ebrahim Murad.

“I cannot see anybody in the horizon except Piñol who knows and grew up, born in Mindanao, he’s a farmer and [former] governor,” the President said last June 27.

“Sabi ko, ‘pumunta ka na lang doon, tulungan mo na lang ako (I said, just go there and help me). Get them started, hurry up, hurry them up so that they would have the first regular organized government that they have long wished for,” he added.

The post of MinDA chief has been vacated since the death of Datu Abul Khayr Dangcal Alonto last May.