MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said on Monday that the government-screening committee assigned to evaluate and recommend the officers-in-charge for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has finished its deliberations and was ready to release the shortlisted candidates within the week.
DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo, chairperson of national screening committee said that the selection was tedious as members had to carefully assess the qualifications of each candidate.
“Our panel has already gone through all the applications and we shall be ready to release the names of those who made it to the short list,” Robredo said in a statement.
“We wanted the whole process to be transparent, inclusive and ensure that sectors are well-represented,” he added.
For the Regional Governor and Vice Governor positions, the committee went through the names of each of the 111 applicants and cut down the list to 25 names. Each member voted for six candidates for governor and four candidates for vice-governor from the 25 names, wherein those receiving at least three votes were automatically included in the shortlist. Afterwards, the committee came up with a shortlist of seven to eight candidates.
Meanwhile, from the 440 applications for the Regional Legislative Assembly (RLA) positions, Robredo said committee members came up with a list of five to six candidates per RLA, depending on the number of voter-population and number of applicants or nominees per province or district. All candidates who received at least three votes were also automatically included in the shortlist, subject to the submission of lacking documentary requirements. Afterwards, the second round of deliberation resulted in a shortlist of 12 candidates per district.
“Initially, the proposal was to come up with only three names per position, but the members decided to expand the list to ensure that there was an equal representation per sector,” Robredo said.