Malacañang: PEA’s directors-on-leave ready to step down

The remaining members of the Public Estates Authority (PEA) board of directors are now willing to step down, Malacañang officials said yesterday.

PEA chairman Ernest Villareal, however, denied the Palace’s statement. Thus far, only Joemari Gerochi has resigned from the seven-man PEA board of directors.

"We have not received any information or report about (Malacañang’s announcement)," Villareal, who is currently on leave, told The STAR in a telephone interview.

Villareal said that he and the other members of the board said they would only resign after they have cleared their names in the alleged scam involving the P600 million overpricing of the 5.1-kilometer President Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard road project.

Their resignation, he said, might be taken as an admission of guilt when the board has done nothing wrong.

Villareal added that he did not speak to chief presidential legal counsel Avelino Cruz about the en masse resignation.

Even PEA director Sulficio Tagud Jr., who blew the whistle on the scam, refused to resign despite the President’s order, saying that his resignation would deprive him of access to documents related to the road project.

Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao said that the PEA board informed Malacañang they would formally tender their individual resignation letters to President Arroyo. Tiglao claimed that Cruz notified him about the PEA board members’ resignation.

"They (PEA board members) think they have been insulted too much by Tagud and they are willing to give full explanations at the (Senate). (The) Blue Ribbon report would be coming out after investigating it, all of these will be cleared," Tiglao said.

Mrs. Arroyo appointed last Oct. 9 retired Armed Forces chief Gen. Diomedio Villanueva as one of the new PEA directors and as the new officer-in-charge (OIC) to take over the functions left by PEA general manager Benjamin Cariño, who is on leave.

The President named Villanueva for the slot vacated by Gerochi, who resigned last Sept. 20, a week after the controversy broke out.

Two weeks ago, the President virtually asked the rest of PEA board members to resign. She then decided to put up an "interim board" at PEA so the agency could proceed with its normal operations after it was dragged into the graft scandal as a result of Tagud’s exposé.

Tiglao said Malacañang has yet to receive confirmation from former Trade and Industry Secretary Rizalino Navarro if he will accept the offer of the President for him to become the OIC chairman of PEA.

Aside from Navarro, Mrs. Arroyo said she has asked two others to be appointed to the PEA board.

Meanwhile, Tuazon called up The STAR before noon yesterday to explain his outburst at a media forum at the Ciudad Fernandina in Greenhills, San Juan last Wednesday.

"I get emotional whenever people twist (facts in) the documents," Tuazon said.

He added that he "did not lunge" at Tagud, but just "threw" a copy of Presidential Decree 1594, the law which he always uses as a reference to explain facts in the road project controversy.