Palace names 2 new SBMA directors

How do you make space where there is none to be had?

There are no vacancies in the board of directors of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), but Malacañang has recently designated two presidential appointees to posts currently occupied by officials protected by a fixed term of office.

Appointed to the 15-man SBMA board were Jaime Mendoza and Ednalino Cajudo, who were supposed to take over the posts of former SBMA board directors Constancia Macomb, representing the naval supply depot; and Nicasio Leonzon, representing the public works center of the former American naval facility in Olongapo City.

The post vacated by Macomb and Leonzon, however, had been filled as early as May last year when President Arroyo appointed broadcaster Mario Garcia and Rex Chan.

The appointment of the two new SBMA board directors came from the office of Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo in a letter dated Jan. 29, 2003, a copy of which was obtained by The STAR yesterday.

The transmittal letter of the two new appointments to the SBMA board was received last week by SBMA chairman and administrator Felicito Payumo.

In a letter to Romulo dated Feb. 6, copy of which was also obtained by The STAR yesterday, Payumo informed the executive secretary that he has "held in abeyance" the assumption into office of Mendoza and Cajudo, who had taken their oaths of office before a judge in an Olongapo City court.

This was after SBMA board director Gaudencio Mendoza, in a letter to Payumo dated Feb. 4, questioned Romulo’s new appointments since there are no existing vacancies at the SBMA.

Mendoza and fellow SBMA board director Luis Vera were the ones supposed to be replaced by Garcia and Chan last year.

This was not carried out after Mendoza raised the legal issue of board directors enjoying fixed terms of office under Republic Act 7227, otherwise known as the Bases Conversion and Development Act of 1992 which created the SBMA as an autonomous body to run the Subic Bay Freeport.

SBMA insiders blamed Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon as being behind the appointments. Payumo replaced Gordon as SBMA chairman after the latter refused to vacate his office during the time of deposed President Joseph Estrada.

Like Payumo, whose six-year term as SBMA chief ends in February 2004, Mendoza and Vera were appointed to the SBMA board by Estrada.

Mendoza said that he and Vera would enjoy a "statutory term of six years from the date of appointment and removable only for cause," according to letters written by Payumo to Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Avelino Cruz on May 6 and 17 last year.

Payumo said the President herself sustained his support of Mendoza and Vera’s remaining in office.

In the two letters to Cruz, who heads the Palace "search committee," Payumo clarified that the appointments of Garcia and Chan were taken to mean they would take over the posts vacated by Macomb and Leonzon, who resigned from the board after the SBMA chairman appointed them to management position in the SBMA.

"It was thought ... that the aforesaid clarification together with Presidential concurrence, which remained undisturbed – and uncorrected, if the Office of the President was indeed of a different mind – for almost a year, restored the respect for our fixed term of office as mandated by RA 7227. Hence I took no action but stayed on as an SBMA director, actively participating in board meetings, for almost a year," Mendoza said in his letter to Payumo.

He appealed to the SBMA chairman that "the ‘new appointment’ must be rejected. To repeat, there are no vacancies to speak of. The fixed term of the incumbents should not be treated like clay in a potter’s hands."

Mendoza stressed that allowing the appointments would render any legal concept of fixed term of office as worthless, and "make a mockery of our laws and accepted jurisprudence on public office and public officers. This should not be countenanced."

The STAR learned that Mendoza is set to question the appointments before the Court of Appeals (CA).

This would be the second time that the Palace-issued appointment would be questioned before the CA on the grounds that the officials concerned enjoy a fixed term of office under the Congress-approved charters of these bodies.

Nixon Kua, general manager of the Philippine Tourism Authority, was unceremoniously removed from his office after the Palace named defeated Makati City vice mayoralty candidate Robert Dean Barbers, son of administration bloc Sen. Robert Barbers, to take over as the new PTA general manager.

While the CA has yet to rule on this case, Barbers has evicted Kua from his office at the PTA, an attached agency of the Department of Tourism.