(UPDATE) MALACAÑANG on Wednesday agreed with Vice President Sara Duterte that not all Cabinet members are competent, including her when she was the secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd). Speaking to reporters, Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said that criticisms by Duterte on the Marcos administration’s governance reflected lapses during her time in office. “It seems like she was right because as secretary of DepEd, she was appointed by the president; the president trusted her, but in the end, the vice president would admit that she had no idea about being the DepEd secretary,” Castro said. “So that is true. Not all secretaries who are appointed because of the president’s trust and belief in them turn out to be truly capable,” she added. Castro cited cases of “ghost students, ghost vouchers, ghost food packs, ghost laptops, ghost school materials” left unresolved by Duterte. “All these ghosts of the vice president when she was DepEd secretary shouldn’t be blamed on the president,” she said. “These messes are now being swept away and cleaned up by... Secretary Sonny Angara,” the Palace official added. In an interview over the weekend on SMNI, Duterte claimed that the “messy” governance of Marcos extended to government agencies. “You can see that governance now seems messy because it’s the same in some departments. It would have been fine if all the secretaries were competent,” she said. Duterte served as education secretary from June 2022 to June 2024.