Aquino names PCGG chair Bautista as new Comelec chief

Andres Bautista

MALACAÑANG on Monday announced that President Benigno Aquino III has appointed lawyer Andres Bautista as the new chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Bautista will replace lawyer Sixto Brillantes who retired last February 2.

Before his appointment as the new Comelec chief, he served as chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Governance (PCGG).

He is the former dean of the Far Eastern University Institute of Law and under his term, he founded the Master of Business Administration-Juris Doctor dual degree program of De La Salle Graduate School of Business and FEU.

He graduated as the class valedictorian of the Ateneo Law School in 1990 and obtained his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1993.

He was also nominated to become the next Supreme Court chief justice in 2012.

Aside from Bautista, lawyer Rowena Amelia V. Guanzon and Sheriff M. Abas were appointed as new Comelec commissioners, replacing retired commissioners Lucenito Tagle and Elias Yusoph.

The terms of the three Comelec appointees will expire on February 2, 2022.

The appointment papers were signed last April 28, 2015. AC

RELATED STORY

Brillantes set to retire; Palace looking for new Comelec chair