Will there be two Angaras sitting in the U.P. Board of Regents?

By Chanda Shahani

Senator Edgardo J. Angara, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture and a former U.P. President, will represent the Senate in the U.P. Board of Regents.

This was confirmed by the Secretariat of the Senate in a telephone call made by the Diliman Diary.

There is also a high probability that Senator Angara's son, Rep. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara (Aurora, LDP) will sit in the BOR by virtue of his probable position as Chairman of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education.

The expected result will be that if Rep. Angara sits as a U.P. Regent, then he and Senator Angara will constitute an important swing vote or two-man voting bloc within the eleven-person BOR.

Telephone calls to the House of Representatives Secretariat and to Rep. Angara's office by the Diliman Diary elicited the information that while no Committee Chairmanships had been formalized yet, there was an expectation that Rep. Angara would get this post.

The online newspaper Journal Online has said that Rep. Angara would likely get the position as part of the horse trading of committee chairmanships among different political parties that elected Rep. Sonny Belmonte (6th District, Quezon City) as House Speaker (http://www.journal.com.ph/index.php/top-stories/14612-house-committee-chairmen-named.html).

The Committee Chairmanship positions in the House of Representatives are expected to be finalized before the third week of August, 2010.

Under Republic Act 9500 or the University of the Philippines (U.P.) Charter of 2008 (http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2008/ra_9500_2008.html) the Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture and the Chairperson of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education both sit on the U.P. BOR in order to represent both Houses of Congress.

With the start of operations by new leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 15th Congress last July 26, 2010, former Senator Manuel Roxas who used to be Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture Chairperson and Rep. Cynthia B. Villar (Las Pinas, NP) who used to be Chairperson of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education have effectively stepped down as regents in the BOR.

(Chanda Shahani is the Editor of the Diliman Diary).