Instead of bickering in public, members of President Rodrigo Duterte’s Cabinet should get their acts together and focus on the country’s most pressing concerns and challenges, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said on Wednesday.

“I urge the members of the Cabinet to confine their disagreements among themselves and resolve their disputes through meetings away from the public’s eye,” Drilon said in a statement.

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“It is for the good of the country if they will stop bickering and criticizing each other in public, so that they can focus on the country’s most pressing concerns and challenges, as well as on the hosting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit 2017,” he said.

The senator pointed to the recent spat between Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and Environment and Natural Resources Gina Lopez and the reported alleged power struggle between Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. and Special Assistant to the President Bong Go.

He also cited the case of former Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno and three undersecretaries in the Department of Agriculture.

“Now more than ever, we need government to give its undivided attention to issues that Filipinos actually care about – better basic services, improved disposition of justice and the rule of law, and peace and order – not to word wars between bureaucrats,” said the Minority Leader.

A former Executive Secretary during the Cory Aquino administration, Drilon said the publicized clashes between Cabinet members and other Malacañang officials “needlessly distract and hamper the government’s ability to address real issues directly affecting the lives of Filipinos.”

He said the country needs to project the national government as a “unified, stable and efficient institution of democracy.”

“The President must fulfill his leadership role, and that will largely rely on our government being focused and free from the squabbling that we have been seeing in the past few weeks,” Drilon further said. CBB

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