Cunanan CV perplexes Santiago

MANILA, Philippines—Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago appeared perplexed by Dennis Cunanan’s CV.

“You’re like a chameleon, you’re leaping everywhere,” Santiago said while questioning Cunanan, the director general of the government microfinance corporation Technology Resource Center (TRC), during a Senate hearing on Thursday.

“You’re a character, a very perplexed one,” she said.

Cunanan admitted hop-scotching from one school to another, and ended up graduating in a little known college in Pasay City, and later a monthlong study at Harvard.

The TRC chief, who is on leave after he was implicated in the P10-billion pork barrel scam, admitted that he accepted an appointment from the Arroyo administration to the Commission on Higher Education.

He quit a month later when he discovered his courses could not be credited to complete undergraduate studies required in the agency that supervises colleges and universities in the country.

Cunanan said he had taken a public administration course at the University of the Philippines but did not finish it.

“In the course of my life in college, I got involved in the student movement. I became passionate about it. So my studies took the backseat. And I also got involved in politics,” he said.

He eventually graduated at Lacson College in Pasay City in 2005 with a commerce degree.

“From there, I had a moist eye at Philippine Law School, which is part of the college,” he reasoned out.

Santiago quipped she didn’t find this logical.

Continuing the narrative, Cunanan said he nevertheless took up law at Philippine Law School, but didn’t take the bar because this would take up a lot of his time.

He also took a master’s degree in public administration at Lyceum Northwestern University in Pangasinan. It wasn’t clear if he completed it.

Sen. Grace Poe likewise grilled Cunanan on his academic records to test his credibility.

Cunanan said he took a monthlong course, Managing Change, at Harvard University, and this was paid for by the TRC and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

Poe asked him to produce documents that the TRC and DOST paid for this.

Cunanan admitted he was also elected to the UP Board of Regents, and then Poe asked him: “What happened to your idealism?”