Three ranking officials of the Aquino administration resigned recently. And all of them gave no real clue as to why, expect to cite personal reasons for leaving.

I'd no sooner noted the strange resignation of Undersecretary Benito Ramos, the much-maligned disaster coordinating agency chief, when yet another senior Aquino administration bureaucrat quit on equally dubious grounds. Dr. Eduardo Banzon, president of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., or Philhealth, resigned “due to family and personal reasons,” according to Malacanang Palace.

The resignation of Banzon, an accomplished doctor, academic and technocrat, obviously caught the palace by surprise, because it had to scramble to appoint Health Secretary Enrique Ona as caretaker of the agency Banzon once headed. There was no time to find a replacement, let alone to brief one on Philhealth's operations, unlike in the case of Ramos.

Once again, there were no further details on the abrupt resignation of Banzon, an appointee of President Noynoy Aquino. The code of omerta that seems to govern all Aquino's appointees – and which has made many people wonder why family and health concerns are always the reasons given for bureaucrats who quit – seems firmly in place.

Banzon was supposed to implement controversial reforms in Philhealth, in furtherance of Aquino's campaign promise of “health care for all.” These included a widely criticized plan to increase Philhealth premium contributions, supposedly to cut down on out-of-pocket expenditures for members needing medical care; the planned increases never took effect for still unknown reasons, even after they were announced at least three times since Banzon's appointment.

A day after Banzon quit, Trade Undersecretary Cristino Panlilio also resigned, citing even vaguer reasons. Panlilio, according to official reports, left government to return to private life.

Malacanang said it was a coincidence that the three resignations happened one after the other. "There are times when people need to move on and to change career paths,” said one palace spokesman.

Just once, I'd like to hear of an Aquino-appointed bureaucrat who quits because of policy differences, incompetence, corruption or one of the real reasons for leaving government, instead of the tired, old health-and-family excuse. But that would violate a clause in their hiring contract which prohibits such candor, it seems, because that would make it appear like Aquino made a mistake in hiring someone – and that, apparently, never happens.

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If this administration hates looking like it hired the wrong people, it detests being found in error (or grossly incompetent) by passing laws that have unintended (and unconstitutional) consequences with an equal passion. The new law cracking down on cybercrime is one instance where the government, long after it has been found not to have done its homework, seeks to save face by insisting on standing on shaky legal ground.

But even a Supreme Court as palace-oriented as this one should find no problem striking down the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, a.k.a. Republic Act 10175. The alternative, after all, is totally scary and unacceptable.

As I've written before, I have no problem with cracking down on identity theft, online fraud, child prostitution, cyber-bullying and all the other obviously punishable offenses that an anti-cybercrime law seeks to address. But the addition of provisions against online libel and allowing so-called takedowns of Web sites suspected of violating the new law (including the libel provision) are totally unacceptable, if not patently illegal.

As the oral debates on RA 10175 began with the expiration of the 120-day restraining order issued by the Court on the law – passed late last year and signed with the usual alacrity by Aquino – the government's own officials are now admitting that perhaps some people have been noynoying when they should have been studying. 

Thus, we are treated to the sight of the chairman of the Department of Justice's Office of Cybercrime, Assistant Secretary Geronimo Sy, saying that “libel is already punished in the general criminal code already. Whether it is punished in print or online, it is the same form of libel; you don’t have to have a special mention in the Cybercrime Prevention Act.”

Meanwhile, the Office of the Solicitor General, the government's official lawyer, has acknowledged, as well, that the takedown provision in Section 19 is unconstitutional. Section 19 allows DoJ, without court approval, to block and restrict access to Web sites it deems in violation of anti-cybercrime provisions.

The redundant libel provision and the takedown clause are the two most unacceptable aspects of the law, which passed in Congress and was signed by the President apparently without anyone noticing them. Now the palace, according to Prevaricator-in-chief Edwin Lacierda, is saying that while the law may be flawed, the Supreme Court must declare it to be so before the government does something about it.

Whatever happened to good old studying a law before Congress or Malacanang green-light it? And what if the Supreme Court upholds RA 10175 – will we get stuck with a law that even its main proponent (the Aquino administration) now admits is defective?

It could happen, given the out-and-out subservience of this Supreme Court to Malacanang. If that comes to pass, then all hell – online and off – can be expected to break loose.

Then, perhaps, the solicitor general and the head of DoJ's cybercrime office will quietly quit, citing health and family reasons. As for Lacierda, that's never going to happen; he's told more lies than anyone can count, in aid of defending the indefensible, and it doesn't seem to put any strain on his health or his family.*