DOJ rigodon

February 8, 2010

 

THE retirement of Chief State Prosecutor Jovito Zuño from service today will trigger a mini-revamp at the Department of Justice.

 

If the chatter from the Department of Justice is to be believed, Quezon City Prosecutor Claro Arellano, an Ateneo

Law 1981 classmate of Philippine Stock Exchange president Francis Lim and former Internal Revenue Commissioner Rene Bañez, has already sewn up his appointment as Zuño’s replacement.

 

In addition to being the chairman and president of the Chief Prosecutors Association Inc., Arellano apparently has three things going for him: His links with the Iglesia ni Cristo, his being the lead prosecutor in the 11 Kuratong Baleleng murder cases against Senator Panfilo Lacson, and his being known personally by the Malacañang judicial headhunter, ex-Quezon City fiscal Carlos de Leon.

 

Jose Vicente Salazar

Jose Vicente Salazar

 

According to the grapevine, with Arellano being transferred to Padre Faura, Rolando Faller, the trusted chief of staff of Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera, leads the pack of candidates for

the Quezon City chief prosecutor’s position.

 

Currently on detail at the DOJ from the Office of Solicitor General, Faller was recruited from the Balgos & Perez law firm, just like Devanadera who had been instrumental in bringing in the putative Quezon City chief prosecutor to the OSG and thence onto the DOJ.

 

The rigodon will also wash up at the undersecretary level, with Arroyo appointee Jose Vicente Salazar leaving this April for a month-long fellowship sponsored by the US State Department.

 

A former president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, it was not immediately clear if Salazar would return to the Justice Department after his US tour, given that his term will also end by June 30.

 

Buendia is the new University Belt

February 5, 2010

 

FEU president Lydia Echauz and dean Benjamin Espiritu led a busload of faculty members from the Morayta campus Thursday morning to inspect the renovation work being rushed in the landmark Zuellig Pharma building on Buendia Avenue, future site of FEU Makati.

 

Lydia Echauz
Lydia Echauz

 

When the Far Eastern University opens the Makati campus by June, it will join oldtime Manila schools like Mapua, Centro Escolar and Lyceum—Lyceum’s College of Law is actually located in Salcedo Village, a few blocks away— that had sprouted branches along the Buendia (now Gil Puyat Avenue) corridor to tap Makati’s and Taguig’s  growing army of working students.

 

Espiritu, a former Mindoro Oriental governor and La Salle dean, was particularly impressed by the state of the six-story building that FEU is leasing from an Ayala company.

 

“Everything still looks new, and modern,” Espiritu said, referring to the nearly five-decade-old structure designed by

National Artist Lindy Locsin.

 

The first two floors of FEU Makati would be run as a joint venture with Pancake House for an on-site restaurant training facility.

 

 The upper floors would have 22 classrooms for commerce and information technology-related courses and possibly even night and Saturday classes for an MBA course.

Malacanang spokesman is a US citizen? It’s true

February 3, 2010
 
THE opposition on Tuesday trained its guns on presidential spokesman Gary Olivar, accusing the former activist turned investment banker as an American citizen embedded right within the inner sanctum of Malacanang.
 
Liberal Party president Franklin Drilon disclosed during an anti-Arroyo forum organized by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines that Olivar sometimes uses an American passport when traveling abroad.
 
To prove its point, the Drilon camp faxed copies of arrival and departure records apparently obtained from the Bureau of Immigration, detailing Olivar's travel records from 1993 to 2009, as well as a photocopy of Olivar's American passport.
 
 
Reached for comment, Olivar issued this statement: "I have never denied I have dual citizenship. thanks to (then) Senator Drilon himself who sponsored that legislation. My government work is fully compliant with both the privileges and constraints of that status as defined by both the Philippine and US governments."
 
 
"This apparent misuse of a person's travel records with government for what appears to be a purely partisan end is a chilling coda to early statements from Sen. Drilon's party-mates seemingly directed against the institutional integrity, first, of the Supreme Court, then of the Commission on Elections."
 
 
"I hope we are not seeing here an incipient inquisition by the self-styled forces of good against what they claim are forces of evil."
 
 
According to Immigration records, Olivar last used his US passport to travel to the United States on November 22, when he was already serving the Arroyo administration.
 
 
 "Under the law, a dual citizen who becomes a public official should renounce the other citizenship," said an opposition lawyer, who asked not to be identified by name because he happens to be a fellow alumnus of Olivar in the University of the Philippines.

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 Bro. Felipe Belleza Jr.

 Bro. Felipe Belleza Jr.

 

After having themselves engaged in political partisan activities and using La Salle Green Hills as ground-zero for anti-Arroyo heckling, the La Salle brothers led by president Felipe Belleza Jr. have advised the alumni board

headed by Jose Mari Misa attending this month’s series of golden jubilee activities to please

not engage in campaigning, wear Gibo green and take part in other partisan activities.

 

Over at Ayala Alabang, the village association has issued notice that political posters and streamers within the gated subdivision will all be dismantled, save for those erected within designated areas. It was not immediately clear whether such order also included the yellow ribbons tied to the subdivision trees or whether the AAVA newsletter will be ordered to stick to writing about village concerns and to stop printing pro-Noynoy Aquino articles.

MORE MONEY-GO-ROUND

The Victorian Supreme Court in Australia has made it known that it does not approve of the in-chamber consultations practiced in the Philippines.

 

In a decision involving Philippine and Australian litigants, the Australian high court characterized such judicial practice as “highly inappropriate in Australia,” after the Philippine counsel of an Australian commercial client admitted to the Australian justices as having conducted “private discussion …with the judge in chambers” in a hotly contested case before Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Oscar Pimentel.

 

Ironically, the opposing counsels from Romulo Mabanta and Sycip Salazar law firms went on record accusing each other of having conducted such secret meetings with Pimentel.

Former censors chief Manuel Morato, an Edsa 1 die-hard, has apparently completely broken his ties with Senator Benigno Aquino III and is underwriting a new reprint of an anti-Aquino book, Greed and Betrayal, by journalist Cecilio Arillo.

MORE GRAPEVINE