Immigration Commissioner Siegfred Mison. FACEBOOK PHOTO
“I WANTED everybody to be rowing in the direction that I wanted to row,” Justice Secretary Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa said when asked why Immigration chief Siegfred Mison was replaced.
Malacañang already appointed Deputy Executive Secretary Ronaldo Geron as the new Immigration chief.
“Commissioner Geron [was] the Deputy Executive Secretary for Finance and Administration and he’s been with the president since day one, in fact, he preceded me in government,” Caguioa said.
Geron who has been in public service for 20 years served as Deputy Executive Secretary to Aquino since 2010. A lawyer, Geron also served as former Batangas provincial administrator and member of its Provincial Board.
“I know him to be a very upright and a very organization-focused person. The BI, with all its problems, needs an expertise like that; and he’s a lawyer, he’s a very good lawyer,” Caguioa told reporters on the sidelights of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) interview to aspirants to the Supreme Court Associate Justice post.
Geron’s appointment came following a report from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) that Mison should be administratively charged for grave misconduct for the transfer of 49-year-old Korean fugitive Cho Seongdae from the BI detention facility in Taguig City to the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) in Camp Aguinaldo. Seongdae was able to escape from the ISAFP facility.
Seongdae, wanted in South Korea for a criminal case, also escaped the BI facility allegedly in cahoots with BI personnel.
Meanwhile, Mison, in a statement, welcomed Geron and said that he will respond to the NBI report in the proper venue and at the proper time.