President Rodrigo Roa Duterte administers the oath of Ad Interim Secretary of Justice Menardo Guevarra during a ceremony at the Malacañang Palace on April 5, 2018. ACE MORANDANTE/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO
“Bring back the dignified image” of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Newly appointed Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Friday said this was the marching order he had received from President Duterte, as he took over an agency lately dogged by controversy.
Mr. Duterte installed Guevarra, a former senior deputy executive secretary, at the helm of the DOJ after accepting the resignation of Vitaliano Aguirre II on Thursday.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque earlier quoted the President as saying that he was displeased with the DOJ decision to dismiss the drug charges against several confessed drug lords, including Kerwin Espinosa and Peter Lim, in a move seen as a setback in the government’s war on drugs.
Guevarra said he was “overwhelmed” by Mr. Duterte’s confidence in him. “The President seldom sees me, yet he entrusts such a sensitive position to me,” he said.
Aguirre, meanwhile, expressed “gratitude” to the President “for (his) trust and confidence” and “the opportunity to serve our countrymen as the steward of DOJ.”
In a message to DOJ employees and officials on Friday, Aguirre added: “I am not sad that (my stint) has ended, rather I am thankful that it happened. I am eternally grateful to all!”
‘Collective efforts’
He also acknowledged the agency’s “collective efforts” that, he said, “(had) improved the DOJ in key areas.”
For Aguirre, who was largely credited for putting behind bars Mr. Duterte’s most vocal critic, opposition Sen. Leila de Lima, “the DOJ is better not because of me but because everybody committed heart, body and soul to march toward a single cadence.”
The former justice secretary and his wife, Marissa, joined department officials and employees at the DOJ office on Padre Faura, Manila, during the noontime Mass held to mark the first Friday of the month.
The former DOJ chief, who wore a jacket bearing the name of his fraternity, Lex Talionis, which also counts Mr. Duterte and four of Aguirre’s deputies among its members, declined media interviews.
He had started packing his personal effects from his office, according to Justice Undersecretary and DOJ spokesperson Erickson Balmes.
Aside from the dismissal of charges against the confessed drug lords, several controversies hounded Aguirre in his two-year stint as head of the DOJ, including his claim that several opposition lawmakers were behind the terror attack in Marawi City in May last year.
Aguirre’s decision to resign was “good for him and the country,” said Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo. “He was so erratic as a secretary in his sense of justice,” he added.
Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes said that the DOJ’s exoneration of the confessed drug lords showed Aguirre’s bias for the rich and the powerful, even if they were criminals.
‘Secretary of injustice’
“His act encourages drug lords to continue their criminal activities and the proliferation of extrajudicial killings and murders. He is a secretary of injustice!” Bastes said.
At the Senate, Sen. Bam Aquino said he was elated over Aguirre’s resignation, adding in a statement that “the Filipino people deserve a credible, capable and respectable justice secretary who will lead with integrity and rebuild our trust in the DOJ.”
Sen. Risa Hontiveros also issued a statement describing the President’s acceptance of Aguirre’s resignation as “too late the hero for Justice Zero.”
She said the President’s move “absolves Aguirre from accountability, and amounts to little more than a sorry attempt on the (President’s) part to save face despite Aguirre’s repeated fiascos.”
Still, Hontiveros added, Aguirre’s departure from the DOJ was “a clear victory against injustice and impunity.”
Whether Aguirre’s resignation was graceful or unceremonious, his actions at the DOJ should be assessed, Sen. Grace Poe said.
“(I)f abuses or oversight were committed, (Aguirre) cannot claim immunity from having to account for them,” she added. —REPORTS FROM NESTOR CORRALES, JULIUS N. LEONEN, MARLON RAMOS, JULIE M. AURELIO AND CHRISTINE O. AVENDAÑO