‘Speaker wanted unqualified BOC employee promoted’
Customs official Mandy Therese Anderson said Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez wanted an “unqualified employee” in the agency promoted. She said she was scolded by the speaker for not pushing for the promotion. Anderson, an Ateneo graduate, placed fifth in the 2016 Bar examinations.
MANILA, Philippines - A Bureau of Customs (BOC) official who called Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez an “imbecile” said yesterday Alvarez wanted an “unqualified employee” in the agency promoted.
Lawyer Mandy Therese Anderson told radio station dzMM that the House boss and fourth highest-ranking official in the land sought the promotion of the employee in May.
She said she asked for the curriculum vitae of the employee, whom she did not name, checked it and found out that the BOC worker was not qualified for promotion.
That is why she did not recommend it, she said.
“The Speaker got mad at me. He called me to his office and scolded me. That was sometime in May,” she recalled.
She said Alvarez later called Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon to push for the promotion but the House boss was rebuffed.
She also said she would stay on as Faeldon’s chief of staff “as long as he will have me.”
Anderson placed fifth in the 2016 Bar examinations. She is an Ateneo graduate and is a Cebuana. She worked for the Villaraza law office before Faeldon, who was reportedly searching for a “young, idealistic” assistant, recruited her.
In a Facebook post last June 16, Anderson called the House boss an “imbecile” for threatening to close down the Court of Appeals for allegedly meddling in the detention by the House of six Ilocos Norte provincial officers.
Later, Alvarez threatened Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno with impeachment.
On Wednesday, Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas dressed down Anderson for her FB post.
“Why do you call the Speaker an imbecile? The Congress has the power to abolish the Court of Appeals because the CA is a creation of Congress,” he told her in the course of a House hearing.
He said Anderson’s FB post has put the entire House in bad light.
In her radio interview, Faeldon’s chief aide said the FB account where she posted her disparaging comment “is very private.”
“Actually, I have a separate account for public posts,” she said.
She said the fact that her private post reached House members meant that “I was being watched.”
The STAR sent Alvarez a text message asking for comment but he has not responded.
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