(Eagle News) — Malacanang said that the new Justice Secretary is Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque made the announcement a few hours after President Rodrigo Duterte said that he has accepted the resignation of erstwhile Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II.
Roque said that Aguirre submitted his letter of resignation today, Thursday, April 5, and that as soon as the President got it, he accepted it.
The President himself announced that he had accepted Aguirre’s resignation on Thursday.
“I accepted the resignation of Vit Aguirre, my fraternity brother,” Duterte announced during the awarding ceremonies of outstanding farmers and fisherfolk in Malacanang.
Guevarra is a noted lawyer who placed second in the 1985 Bar examinations.
His first job as a lawyer was with the technical staff of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.
He then joined a well-known law firm in Makati and formed his own law partnership in 1990.
Until April 2015 Atty. Guevarra was in-active private law practice and faculty member of the Ateneo School of Law.
He was appointed as a member of the 2010 Philippine Truth Commission, and then as Deputy Executive Secretary for legal affairs at the Office of the President in May 2015. In February 2016, he was appointed as Commissioner of Philippine Competition Commission.
His areas of specialization are in Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Administrative Litigation.
He took his oath as Senior Deputy Executive Secretary on June 30, 2016 during the mass oath-taking of the new officials of the then newly-installed Duterte administration.
(Eagle News Service)
