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By Efren L. Danao, Senior
Reporter
An unprecedented number of
presidential appointees will be confirmed by the Commission on
Appointments in its last plenary session Wednesday.
Senate President Manuel Villar
Jr. on Monday said about 100 diplomats, military officers, Cabinet
members and officials of constitutional commissions are up for
confirmation. He had directed that no committee hearings by the
commission be conducted on Wednesday because it would take long for
the plenary to confirm those already endorsed by the various
committees.
Among those to be confirmed are
Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr., Justice Secretary Raul
Gonzalez, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves and Gen. Alexander Yano,
Armed Forces chief of staff.
The mass confirmation of
presidential appointees was resorted to after Sen. Jamby Madrigal
had threatened to invoke Section 20 of the commission’s rules on
all those up for plenary confirmation. This section, once invoked
for any reason by a member of the commission, automatically defers
the consideration of an appointment by the plenary. Its invocation
is non-debatable. Section 20 could not be invoked, however, on the
last session day of the Commission on Appointments.
Before Madrigal, senators used
Section 20 only against individual appointees. Madrigal first
invoked it on mass scale on March 12 when she blocked the
confirmation of Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd, poll
Commissioner Moslemen Macarambon and 17 generals and seven colonels
led by Lt. Gen. Pedro Isberto, the Armed Forces deputy chief of
staff. She claimed that she did it out of principle but Sen. Rodolfo
Biazon believed otherwise.
Biazon said the appointees were
just victims of Madrigal’s pique after Brig. Gen. Nestor Sadiarin
got promoted in the previous plenary session despite her vow to
block it. Madrigal’s attention was elsewhere when Sadiarin’s
name was called for promotion. She stood up only after Villar had
banged the gavel and by then, it was too late. Biazon had called for
a review of Section 20. Villar supported the call.
The appointments of the 24
military officers, Duque and Macarambon were not returned to the
committees. They will be among those who will be confirmed tomorrow.
The ad-interim appointments of
Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes and Chairman Jose Melo of the
Commission on Elections are expected to be bypassed as some
commission members had said they have many clarificatory questions
to ask the appointees.
Also expected to be bypassed
unless they could be endorsed by the commission’s committees are
Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza and Local Governments
Secretary Ronaldo Puno.
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