Lapuz: I’ve already been designated Ched chair

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte talks to his former professor Jose David Lapuz at the so-called Malacañang of the South. Listening to their conversation are Dr. John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, National President of the 1st Philippine Pro-Democracy Foundation, and Dr. Bobbit Carlos, MD, former mayor and representative of Valenzuela City. PHOTO COURTESY OF PROF. LAPUZ

DAVAO CITY—Hoping to “remove all cloudiness and vagueness” regarding his designation, Prof. Jose David Lapuz on Wednesday evening confirmed that his former student President-elect Rodrigo Duterte indeed tapped him to head the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) in the incoming administration.

Echoing the account of Ateneo de Davao University President Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J., Lapuz told INQUIRER.net that Duterte offered him the Ched chairmanship during a meeting at the presidential guesthouse here last week, even as incumbent Ched chairperson Patricia Licuanan’s term will not expire until 2018.

“Let me say once and for all: I have already been appointed as Chairman of CHED by President Rody Duterte personally and in the presence of a room full of visitors and admirers last June 6, 2016, Wednesday morning at 2:30 a.m. at the Malacañang of the South, Barangay Panacan, Davao City, and therefore I am so very grateful to my former student in the Lyceum of the Philippines. President Duterte in the early 1960s,” Lapuz told this reporter in a Facebook message.

“In all these confusions, I tell you that the truth will prevail. This is what I call, the sovereignty and power of the truth,” he said.

Lapuz will replace Licuanan, who was appointed by President Benigno Aquino III in 2010 for a four-year term fixed under the law and was reappointed to a second four-year term, which expires in 2018.

Lapuz said his meeting with Duterte, which he detailed in his blog, started with his presentation on why he wanted to be Ched chairman in the next administration.

“After this presentation, you (Duterte) asked me, ‘Do you want to serve the government?’ I answered ‘Yes.’ As what? In what Capacity?’ you asked me. ‘As Chairman of CHED,’ I replied. ‘YES,’ you President Rody Duterte quickly replied as witnessed and heard by the people inside the room. Then we had greetings and felicitations and then we had a last photography where I stood beside you and I repeated: Did I hear you correctly that you have appointed me as Chair of CHED. ‘YES,’ you replied again,” Lapuz wrote.

“Mr. President-Elect Rody Duterte I hope and pray I will always observe your trust and confidence and that I will always live up to your expectations and beliefs, if I do not, hopefully, exceed or surpass them, as your professor and you as my student which I had the privilege of somehow imparting knowledge to you,” he added.

Tabora told INQUIRER.net on Wednesday that Duterte may ask Licuanan to give up her post based on the 2014 Commission on Audit report released just in January on unspent P1.2 billion fund for poor students, due to Ched’s “internal control weaknesses” in processing and releasing allowances under its student financial assistance programs (STUFAPS).

Asked about her possible replacement, Licuanan on Tuesday said: “Let it come from the President-elect himself.”

Lapuz, an alumnus of the University of the Philippines, took his post-graduate studies in international politics and foreign policy at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He started teaching at the University of Santo Tomas in 1970, and now teaches international relations and political science at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

Lapuz served as consultant of former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo “for matters related to international relations, global politics, comparative foreign policy, moral and humanitarian issues in international affairs, and the changing nature of world politics.”

Lapuz was one of the 45 member-commissioners of the Unesco National Commission of the Philippines (Unacom), on the Committee of Social and Human Sciences, and is a member of the Unesco Advisory Committee on Human Rights and Poverty based in Paris. He was also a board member and commissioner at the National Historical Society under the Arroyo administration.