President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. witnesses a live demonstration during the Philippine Navy's (PN) first-ever anti-air warfare capabilities exercise off the coast of San Antonio, Zambales on May 19, 2023. Joey Razon, PNA/File

MANILA — The Palace this week announced a reorganization of the National Security Council, a move that administration officials called a matter of housekeeping but one that at least one supporter of Vice President Sara Duterte linked to the 2028 national elections.

Among the changes to the National Security Council are the exclusion of the vice president and of former presidents from the advisory body.

Duterte, who resigned from the Marcos Jr. Cabinet last June, has yet to comment on the reorganization, but her father’s former spokesperson Salvador Panelo has called the move a “brazen measure to diminish the political star power of VP Sara.”

Duterte is widely believed to be running for president in 2028 and has attributed issues raised against her to attempts to derail that potential plan. 

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VP DUTERTE’S CLASH WITH THE NSC

Duterte resigned as head of the Department of Education and as a vice chair of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict but reminded the NSC in November that she was still a member.

The NSC had, at the time, announced it was taking her comments against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his family “a matter of national security.”

Duterte said she had been deliberately misunderstood and that she had not been informed of the NSC meeting as she requested the council to explain why the sitting vice president was “not a member…or why, as member, I have not been invited to the meetings.”

Executive Order No. 81, made public last Friday, has mooted that question. 

According to the text, the order was issued to, among other things, make sure "council members uphold and protect national security and sovereignty, thereby fostering an environment conducive to effective governance and stability."

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who signed the EO for the President, said Friday that "at the moment, the VP is not considered relevant to the responsibilities of membership in the NSC."

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WHAT IS THE NSC ANYWAY?

Created in 1950 and attached to the Office of the President, the NSC says on its website that it "the principal advisory body on the proper coordination and integration of plans and policies affecting national security."

Executive Order No. 330, which created it, gives the NSC the mandate to "advise the President on matters of national defense and shall make recommendations on such other subjects as the President may from time to time submit for study and consideration."

A reorganization in 1986 made it the “lead agency of the government for coordinating the formulation of policies, relating to or with implications on the national security.” 

It was also tasked then with advising the President, evaluating and analyzing information related to national security, and to formulate and to coordinate on related policies.

The council under EO 81 has more than two dozen members, including members of the Cabinet and leaders of Congress, and could expand to include "other government officials and private citizens as the President may appoint or designate from time to time."

A smaller executive council includes the President, the executive secretary, the Senate president, the House speaker, the national security adviser, and the secretaries of Foreign Affairs, Justice, National Defense, and of the Interior and Local Government. 

The NSC has a secretariat, currently headed by National Security Adviser Eduardo Año Jr., who is also NSC director general.

Senate Majority Leader Francis Tolentino last June urged Marcos Jr. to convene the NSC to discuss potential responses to Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea that led to the Chinese Coast Guard boarding and damaging Filipino vessels.

A Philippine Navy sailor's thumb was severed in that confrontation.

'BAD POLITICS'

In a statement to media, Panelo, who is not an official spokesperson but often speaks in behalf of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his family, called the reorganization “an ill-advised presidential move.”

He added: “It smacks of dirty politics— another brazen measure to diminish the political star power of VP Sara.”

Panelo also claimed the removal of former Presidents from the NSC was only done to “make it appear that [Vice President Duterte] is not being targeted.”

Some of Vice President Duterte's online supporters have also voiced alarm at the reorganization, pointing to the creation in 1966 by then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos of an NSC executive committee that excluded then-Vice President Fernando Lopez Sr. and the eventual declaration of Martial Law in 1972.

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Bersamin, as early as last Friday, said the EO was issued "to reorganize and streamline the membership of the NSC", adding the President can add members and advisers to the council "when the need arises."

National Security Adviser Año, who was armed forces chief and later head of the Department of the Interior and Local Government under the Vice President's father, has also said that presidents have the authority to change the composition of the body created to advise them on national security matters.

"Pursuant to this authority, previous presidents have reorganized the composition of the NSC to meet the President’s requirements and changing conditions," he said, noting the council had also been reorganized in the Ramos and Macapagal-Arroyo presidencies.

"[T]he purpose of reorganization is to enhance the formulation of policies relating to national security so that actions and decisions thereon by the Presidents rests on sound advice and accurate information," he said.

The vice president's father had excluded then-Vice President Leni Robredo from meetings, telling her in December 2016 to "to desist from attending all Cabinet meetings" due to irreconcilable differences.

Robredo left the Cabinet that month saying the order "[made] it impossible for me to perform my duties" as head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council.

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'TRUE FACE OF POLITICS'

For activist party-list Bayan Muna, the NSC reorganization goes beyond national security issues.

“This is about political survival,” former Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares said in a statement Sunday.

He said EO 81 “clearly shows the widening rift between the Marcos and Duterte factions” in national government as well as a supposed lack of government attention to more pressing issues.

"Ang mga ganitong hakbang ay nagpapakita ng tunay na mukha ng Philippine politics — isang bangayan ng mga dinastiya para sa kapangyarihan habang ang mamamayang Pilipino ay nagdurusa sa kahirapan,” he said.

(These kinds of moves show the true face of Philippine politics — a rivalry for power between dynasties while Filipino citizens suffer in poverty)

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan — like Bayan Muna, both a critic and a target of the NSC — earlier said that the reshuffle at the NSC would not bring "any real change" in policy anyway.

Colmenares said Sunday that the clash between dynasties should prompt voters and citizens "to struggle for genuine political change that is not beholden to any of these political factions." — from reports by Pia Gutierrez, ABS-CBN News