New COA chief named

MANILA, Philippines – President Arroyo has appointed Reynaldo Villar as the new chairman of the Commission on Audit (COA), Malacañang announced yesterday.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said that Villar, who has been serving as acting chairman since the retirement of Guillermo Carague last February, would be the permanent head of the constitutional body.

Villar, a former provincial board member of Pangasinan, is the older brother of Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group head Antonio Villar Jr.

Villar received his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1967 from the Ateneo de Manila University and he practiced law for 10 years.

During his days as a law student, Villar founded the Order of Utopia, an Ateneo law fraternity.

Based on the website of the COA, Villar started his career as a legal assistant to the governor of Pangasinan and then as technical assistant to the general manager of the Philippine Virginia Tobacco Administration.

He was elected as a delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention where his fellow delegates voted him their floor leader.

In 1982, Villar was a constitutional law professor at the Ateneo College of Law.

From 1980 to 1986, Villar served as the provincial board member of Pangasinan like his late father Antonio Sr.

Villar joined COA in 1988 where he started out as staff officer II then moved up to graft investigator and prosecutor and human resource management officer.

The President appointed Villar as a commissioner of the COA in 2004 following the end of the seven-year term of Raul Flores.

Under the law, the COA has two commissioners in addition to the chairman, and all of them have a seven-year term without reappointment.

A former Jaycees chapter president, Villar is now a senator of the Philippine Jaycees.

As a Rotarian, Villar is a chapter member and co-founder of the Urdaneta, Pangasinan, chapter of the Rotary Club.

Villar is married to the former Lilli Concepcion, with whom he has three children.

With the appointment of Villar to the COA, the Civil Service Commission is now the only constitutional body that has no chairman.

Former CSC chairwoman Karina David finished her term the same time Carague did.