Obviously, the administration has grossly miscalculated the public fallout when corruption and ill-gotten wealth are brought to the fore as an election issue so close to an election year.
Chinese-Filipino businessmen avoid making major decisions during “ghost month.” 
On the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar year, ghosts are released from the gates of hell, roam around the earth – mad as hell. The Chinese then avoid extraordinary purchases or travel to places unknown, wary of offending mischievous ghosts that can cause great misfortune.
The first lunar day of the eighth lunar month was on September 7. The ghost month has ended.
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Reports were recently published about Vice President Leni Gerona Robredo saying that she is tempted to ask President Rodrigo Duterte to let her handle the COVID-19 pandemic crisis if only to take the country out of its current rut that has wrecked families and disabled major services and industries.
This won’t happen, of course. Remember when, against advice, she took on the drug war portfolio and was fired three weeks later for showing everybody how it is done?
Leni’s recourse is at the polls. She can declare her candidacy as early as tomorrow and devote part of her time and energy to the promise of change that the country needs.
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The contrast is blinding.
While the President sometimes takes time out to talk to the people in his pre-recorded messages, most of these televised events have now been devoted to incoherent rants against critics and politicians who have imbibed some courage to denounce the dizzying stench of corruption in the executive department.
No clear plan to address the pandemic is being presented. Only bullets from the hip, depending on the mood of the day.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Vice President, with an annual budget that is dwarfed by the budget of a moderately sized local government unit, has been busy providing targeted vaccination sites, COVID testing with incentives, and contracting local tailors and suppliers for much-needed personal protection equipment.
Several corporate donors and private volunteers have answered the call from the Vice President who they apparently trust with their time and money.
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While those ghosts of Chinese lore are back in their crypt, the past month has undressed current government leaders as vagabonds who are way too careless with the people’s money. The past two years have been “ghost” years, if truth be told.
What is truly ironic is that it is the President’s Chinese friends, led by the drug-tainted Michael Yang, who appear to have run away with billions in public funds as being slowly revealed as the Senate investigates the failings of the Department of Health.
The President is reeling and can only manage to croak out weak fallacies in stemming the tide of public opinion.
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Obviously, the administration has grossly miscalculated the public fallout when corruption and ill-gotten wealth are brought to the fore as an election issue so close to an election year.
Manny Villar and Jejomar Binay are prime examples of erstwhile poll leaders who fell steeply in the middle of the campaign because of money issues.
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Erstwhile presidential aide Senator Bong Go has defended the President’s preference for the Davao group in making appointments to the executive department. Go made the defense in the aftermath of DBM Undersecretary Christopher Lao’s shellacking at the Senate.
It was Lao who was compelled to admit that his department awarded a multi-billion peso supply agreement to Pharmally Inc., a newly formed local company with a capitalization of only half a million pesos. This company was shown to have fugitives as incorporators who in turn have links to Presidential friend and erstwhile adviser Michael Yang.
Again, the Vice President was correct in pointing out that presidential appointments are not favors that are to be carelessly showered upon sycophants, regardless of merit. The people entrusted the President with their votes, believing that the support team that he brings with him are loaded with competence and integrity./WDJ