Malacañang quickly rejected the notion that Ping’s departure was any loss, a rejection itself widely rejected by the general public and the media.

Febrile yet fruitless attempts followed to sully Ping with the fabricated canard (that’s right canard na, fabricated pa) that he dishonestly disbursed some P50 million.

This was itself “small beer”—as one editorial writer likes to say who aspires to affect, because he has not successfully affected, a breezy editorial style.

The sum is, indeed, beer so small as to crush credibility of graft insinuations regarding someone who has handled billions without a stain in the past.

But then there is always a first time.

But then again, if that were so, we would not be giving this administration so much benefit of the doubt. Ping had the unmatched ability to get everything done that needed doing without a smidgen of suspicion of wrongdoing in the reign of Cory Aquino.

The same cannot be said of former and reinstated LTO chiefess (that is the correct word) Virginia Torres, whose suspension for influence peddling, upon strong recommendation of the secretary of Justice, forced her nominal chief’s resignation instead.

Ms. Torres has since taken on the solicitor general as her PR person. In an interview with dwIZ’s rambunctious morning talk show Karambola, where you are lucky to get in a word edgewise, the solicitor general showed how he was taken in with her story that she did visit one faction of an intracorporate fight inside Stradcom, which operates the LTO’s computerized operations, the day before she tried to seize the company offices in the company of that faction.

Torres has refused to pay Stradcom for past services; at least while it is in the control of the founding Quiambao group. She may pay when the faction she is partial to is put in charge.

Virgie points to a belatedly filed interpleader in court to wash her hands clean. But she has not made a judicial deposit of the owed sum because that would strip her of any influence in the continuing squabbles of the company.

But that is all water over the damned and way past the bridge. So please, let’s show a little class. Ping’s gone. Mission accomplished. He didn’t fit in but let him go with a little graciousness, the way Mar Roxas paved the exit of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez with a plangent performance of presidential magnanimity, suggesting even that she retain her security. This was a polite, if insincere, concession that she may have done her job from time to time. It is Noynoy’s only elegant move to date. It is for such tact, which comes with breeding, that the President has so much affection for Mar. Wealth, even if ill gotten, is wealth still had; but breeding cannot be stolen.

Still, Malacañang was right on two trivial points.

The first is that it is the President’s prerogative who to keep and who to let go. Yet it has never been a question of prerogative—except for the spurious commission struck down by the Supreme Court to investigate the only crook, national or local, in the government in the past nine years. The issue is not the prerogative but the wisdom not to say good taste of its exercise.

The second trivial point is that no one is indispensable to the Presidency—an observation brimming with vacuity. (I am adopting the luxuriant verbosity that passes for intellectualism in this neck of the jungle.) This trivial point was even pressed tautologically; because the presidency is unitary; Executive officials are mere alter egos.

Without the President, there wouldn’t be a presidency, the Palace pointed out; that is, until the vice president takes over after a complicated process requiring a Cabinet declaration of presidential incapacity to discharge the duties of the office or an impossible impeachment on the legally inexistent ground of presidential passivity.

Inexistent because Ping Lacson’s anti-red-tape law (2007) deems as approved any matter unacted on by the government after a number of days. So even if the Executive does nothing about anything, it is deemed done.

To be sure, this offers a convenient excuse for letting dishonesty slide past unawares. But with this law, our country can happily coast along—which is preferable to being run aground—with a completely inert government.

Indeed, no departure cripples the presidency except the President’s. Even then, there is always the vice president to replace him in a flash. So Malacañang is doubly, if trivially, correct. Indeed, again, the departure of the President’s best appointee thus far should be no cause for concern, not least because a forthcoming movie—The Rise of the Planet of the Apes—gives the Philippines hope, give or take a lot of DNA tampering.

But we need not wait that long for relief. No sooner did the President’s most decent and competent official leave, than another like him stepped in. Mar Roxas filled the vacancy despite the rumor it was the Binay camp that suggested putting him in a line Cabinet post than as chief of staff with a hand on the tiller of a ship of state, where the crew has no clue how to hold anything not a bottle or encircled by a trigger guard.

The DOTC may be a political dead end, as they believe who wanted it for Mar, but it is also a trove of potential personal wealth if you want it to be. Thus it is right up the alley of someone of Mar’s unfailing integrity. Having plenty of moneymaking opportunities ripe for the picking is just the situation where he may rise in the public esteem because he will take none of it. He won’t even use any of it to advance his political plans in 2016 by, say, pouring projects into areas where he did not do well in the last election as other officials are already doing with an eye on the same election. On the other hand, Filipinos have a grudging respect for bold crooks that get away with it. This sentiment is not unmixed with a lust to share some of his booty.

The test of whether Mar Roxas will be allowed to run a tight ship will turn entirely on whether Virginia Torres is jettisoned. But then Mar can always resign. And if the resignation of the most competent and honest man in the Aquino administration did not shake it, surely the resignation of another one like him—from the same post for the same reason—might.

But then it might not.

And if it did, what would be the alternative to President Aquino?

Therein lies the genius of the political betrayal that marred the last election worse than the dubiety of its automation. There is no conceivable alternative to Noynoy.