FIRING LINE: Remulla cleaning house

FIRING LINE: Remulla cleaning house

By Robert B Roque Jr. l October 28, 2025

The new Ombudsman, former Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla, could well be on his first bold strike as the new sheriff in town. Last October 22, Remulla ordered a sweeping purge within his new office, directing 80 senior officials to submit courtesy resignations and asking 204 newly hired employees to reapply for their posts.

The order targets those suspected to be “midnight appointees,” mostly from the final days of the previous administration. For now, they are to keep working while under review. It sounds bold. It even looks brave.

Duterte supporters, however, doubt whether he is after real reform or just a gritty performance for the cameras. They ask: What’s really under review here? Well, they claim, essentially, it’s not the persons holding the posts under investigation per se, but the grip and influence of the old Duterte administration on the office.

To be fair to Remulla, this shake-up of the office is direly needed, if only to erase the perception that the Ombudsman has been too lenient with crooks in government under former President Rodrigo Duterte. Note that under Ombudsman Samuel Martires — Duterte’s appointee — silence became the currency of survival.

This was the ombudsman who perfected the art of doing nothing. If I may borrow words from the Editorial of an online publication (ThePhilBizNews). Martires might seem like the epitome of cloaking submission as discretion and complicity as confidentiality. What he called prudence was Duterte’s Omerta — a pact of silence that buried accountability and betrayed the people the office was sworn to protect.

Now enter the twist: the Joel Villanueva case. In 2016, then-Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales dismissed Villanueva for misuse of ₱10 million in pork barrel funds – a ghost farm product-purchasing project in Region 11.

The Senate, invoking separation of powers, banded together and refused to enforce the ruling through a legal opinion pushed by Sen. Tito Sotto.

Then, as Remulla came in, he vowed to revive the order dismissing Villanueva as the penalty Morales had found fit for his administrative folly. But Remulla backpedaled, announcing he would no longer write to the now SenatePresident Sotto.

Why? Because he discovered that there was nothing to revive. Yes! Martires did two acts on Villanueva’s case that exemplified the accusations against him as Ombudsman – a shield for the powerful and a silencer of whistleblowers.

First, Martires dismissed in 2019 the criminal component of the charges against Villanueva, contrary to findings in the administrative investigation. And second, since his act did not dissolve the penalty in the administrative case already ruled on by Morales, he quietly reversed the dismissal order himself. That act is what now keeps Villanueva, and perhaps many others, free of consequence.

Now, Remulla shocks us with another revelation: that he’s battled leukemia. After surviving open-heart surgery, he faced blood cancer, and now finds his newfound health a reason for him to remain in office. For that, this corner offers no cynicism — only respect and a wish that his full recovery prevails.

Still, if he truly means to restore integrity, may he not wield justice like a sword meant only for the Marcoses’ enemies. The test of courage isn’t in cleansing the house of rivals; it’s in cleaning up your own house.

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