Responding to criticisms, Presidential Spokesman Abigail Valte said President Aquino’s decision to give Ochoa the additional designation, as provided by Executive order (EO) 46, which reorganized the PAOCC, is because Ochoa also heads the Cabinet National Security Cluster.
Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., an opposition lawmaker, said he hoped Ochoa would not use his new assignment “for political purposes and to press hard on the opposition.”
“As a long time friend of Ochoa, I have great confidence on him to assume his new role, knowing his past experience on handling similar assignments. But I only hope that he would not use it for political purposes, to press to the wall the opposition,” he told reporters on Friday night’s second board meeting of the Philippine Councilors League.
Marcos said, however, that the government should have rather concentrated on looking after the welfare and benefits of the police force, “like providing them affordable housing and medical care.”
In issuing EO 46, which Malacañang released on Friday but was signed on June 13, Mr. Aquino said “the reorganization and strengthening of the PAOCC is imperative to substantiate and generate results in the fight to eliminate corrupt practices.”
The commission has as members the secretaries of the Interior, Justice, Defense and Foreign Affairs; the chiefs of the Armed Forces and the National Police; the director general of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency; the National Bureau of Investigation chief, and the executive director of the Philippine Center for Transnational Crime.
The PAOCC is tasked, among others, to “prepare and implement a fast track anticrime, antigraft and corruption action plan and program, and adopt appropriate measures to ensure an effective and efficient anticrime drive.”
It is also mandated to “conduct intelligence and counterintelligence operations to identify government officials and employees, crime syndicates and their cohorts” involved in criminal activities” and to “cause or direct the immediate arrest, investigation and speedy prosecution of organized crime groups, and government officials and employees.”
(Mia Gonzalez and Manuel Cayon)
