Presidential legal counsel Caguioa to replace De Lima?

MANILA, Philippines - Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Benjamin Caguioa will most likely replace Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, who will run for senator in the May 2016 elections.

Three reliable sources revealed that Liberal Party stalwart and Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr. may no longer be appointed Department of Justice (DOJ) chief following his feud with Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman over the distribution of emergency shelter assistance (ESA) grants in Iloilo.  

Tupas, serving his third and last term in Congress, and his siblings have been at odds over who will succeed him in Iloilo’s fifth congressional district.

Tupas wants his chief-of-staff and wife Angeli Lee to replace him, but his brother Iloilo Vice Gov. Raul Tupas is also eyeing the position.

Raul complained recently that he was sidelined in the distribution of ESA in Concepcion town because his elder brother Niel did not want him there.

The vice governor has reportedly accused his congressman-brother of using ESA for political purposes.

Palace insiders also disclosed that Undersecretary for Special Concerns Michael Frederick Musngi might finally take over Caguioa’s post as chief presidential counsel, though in a temporary capacity.

He was at the time supposed to replace Caguioa, who was prevailed upon by Aquino to stay on in the Cabinet.

Later this year Musngi will have to cross over to the judiciary as one of six new justices of the Sandiganbayan, where he had applied after a law added two more divisions to the anti-graft court.

In January 2013, Aquino appointed Caguioa, his former classmate from grade school up to college at the Ateneo de Manila University, as the new chief presidential legal counsel, replacing Eduardo de Mesa, the first CPLC in mid-2010.

De Mesa has since been transferred to the Bases Conversion and Development Authority.

Caguioa took up economics and later law at the Ateneo, where he was a classmate and close friend of Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr., Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, Internal Revenue commissioner Kim Henares, Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, among many others.

He was a senior partner of the Caguioa and Gatmaytan law office. Prior to passing the Bar in 1986, he obtained his law degree from the Ateneo de Manila law school in 1985, along with several members of the current Aquino administration.

He joined SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan in 1986 and was a partner there from 1994 until February 2007.

Caguioa went on leave for a year in 1987 to join his father - the late Court of Appeals justice Eduardo Caguioa – where he handled mostly appeal cases in the CA and the Supreme Court. 

He was a professor at the colleges of Law of Ateneo de Manila University and San Sebastian College, where he taught obligations and contracts, property, statutory construction and administrative law.

Caguioa has been cited as a leading Philippine lawyer in the Dispute Resolution field by Chambers & Partners in its 2010 and 2011 Asia-Pacific publications.

He specializes in litigation and arbitration, having done so for the last 25 years. He has devoted much of his career to civil and commercial litigation before courts and quasi-judicial bodies of all levels, and to arbitration before various arbitration bodies.

According to his law office’s website, Caguioa has also “actively practiced before the different levels of the prosecutorial system, and has acted as private prosecutor or defense counsel before the regular courts and the Sandiganbayan.”