Padaca eyed for Comelec

Former Isabela governor Grace Padaca INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

Former Isabela governor Grace Padaca is being considered to fill the lone vacant position in the Commission on Elections (Comelec), according to sources in the electionl body.

Padaca will be appointed by President Benigno Aquino as the seventh commissioner, the sources said.

Sought for comment, Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said he has heard that Padaca was one of those being considered for the post but not about her actually getting the appointment.

“She will be a big asset to this institution if she is appointed,” Brillantes said.

If the rumors are true, Padaca would become the third Aquino appointee to the poll body from the ruling Liberal Party camp in the 2010 elections.

Brillantes served as Aquino’s election lawyer in his 2010 presidential bid and Commissioner Christian Robert Lim was part of the LP campaign team in 2010.

The Comelec has been without a seventh member in the en banc since Augusto Lagman was not reappointed last April.

Approval by the congressional Commission on Appointments for Lagman, an information technology expert, was held up and Malacañang repeatedly appointed him on an ad interim basis.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who also chairs the CA, had apparently objected to Lagman’s permanent appointment.

Enrile had accused Lagman, a former official of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, of “vote trending” in favor of the candidates of then President Corazon Aquino during the 1987 senatorial race in which Enrile placed last.