TOO LATE but worth the three-month wait?
The search is over, at least for the chairman and two commissioners of the Commission on Elections, and the Office of the President seems to have risen from slumber.
Vacant seats in two other constitutional commissions and the Philippine National Police remain unfilled, however.
On Monday, Malacañan announced the appointment of lawyer Andres D. Bautista, until then chair of the Presidential Commission on Good Governance (PCGG), as Comelec chairman.
Two other lawyers were also named to serve as commissioners of the poll body — Rowena V. Guanzon, who had served briefly as Commission on Audit (COA) commissioner, and Sheriff M. Abas from Cotabao, who had served as acting director of the Civil Service Commission-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Bautista replaces Sixto K. Brillantes Jr. whose term as Comelec chairman lapsed last February yet. Guanzon and Abas will assume the seats vacated by Lucenito N. Tagle and Elias R. Yusoph, whose terms of office had ended in February, too.
Earlier, the Office of the President had announced the designation of Miguel G. Aguinaldo, former deputy executive secretary for legal affairs, as chairman of the Commission on Audit, in lieu of Ma. Gracia Pulido-Tan.
Tan, the Comelec chairman and commissioners, and Francisco Duque III, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, had similarly stepped out of office on Feb. 2, 2015, following the end of their respective tenure.
Today, May 5, is also when Loretta Ann Rosales and the four commissioners of the Commission on Human Rights will mark their last day in office.
President Benigno S. Aquino III has yet to appoint a new director-general for the Philippine National Police, following the resignation of officer-in-charge, Superintendent Leonardo Espina.
Unless Aquino “appoints the most qualified for the job, drift and inertia could ensue in these agencies, partisan politics could override his choices, and his ‘Daang Matuwid’ reforms could head off to disrepair or reversal,” PCIJ had pointed out in an earlier report, “Silent emergency: Who should chair COA, Comelec, CSC, CHR?”
Curiously, the appointment of the three Comelec officials was announced only on May 4 even as the Office of the President clarified that their appointment papers had been signed six days earlier on April 28, 2015. If this was the case, in fact, the three officials will assume seven-year terms of office ending Feb. 2, 2022.
The implication is clear: if the President had signed the appointment papers of the three officials on April 28 — while Congress was in recess — they could take position immediately, on ad interim basis.
However, if their appointments were made only on May 4, when Congress had resumed its session, the three officials could not assume office, until after they the bicameral Commission on Appointments had confirmed their appointment.
Aquino had named Bautista, a former dean of Far Eastern University College of Law, PCGG chair in 2010. PCGG. Bautista graduated class valedictorian at the Ateneo de Manila University Law School.
Bautista will now be an addition to the long and colorful history of Comelec chairpersons.
In “Your Honor, Your Horror? A parade of Comelec chairs,” PCIJ had noted that the public’s trust – securing and keeping it — has always been a challenge to Comelec chairs.
“Of the eight chairpersons appointed to the poll body since 1986, a few have even gained infamy for brokering plum deals with contractors and for wasting billions of public funds in botched election modernization projects,” the story had noted. – Cong B. Corrales, PCIJ, May 2015
