Last Monday, Dec, 15, 2025, veteran Provincial Board Member Edwin Tanael rose to sponsor a resolution asking the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to review and determine the validity of the election and qualification of the elected President of the Federation of Alumni Associations, who gets to sit as a member of the Catanduanes State University’s Board of Regents.
As a legislator and alumnus of the Catanduanes State Colleges, he emphasized that the measure has no personal agenda and is guided solely the principles of legality, institutional integrity, and delicadeza.
Tanael added that in the interest of propriety and to avoid any perception of undue influence while the matter is under review, some alumni have raised the view that it would be proper to allow the appropriate authority—CHED—to issue a clear and authoritative ruling on the issue.
As it happens, the recently elected FAA president is no less than Governor and former CatSU President Dr. Patrick Alain T. Azanza, whose protégé, Dr. Gemma Acedo, has succeeded him at the helm of the island province’s biggest institution of higher learning.
Tanael’s measure is based on CHED Memorandum Order No. 03, series of 2001 that provides the revised Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) for Republic Act 8292, including the uniform composition and powers of the governing boards of chartered state universities and colleges, among others.
Under said memo, the governing board of SUCs like CatSU is composed of the chairman of CHED as chairman, the SUC President as vice chairman, and the Senate Education Committee chairman, House Committee on Higher and Technical Education chairman, NEDA Regional Director, DOST Regional Director, two private sector representatives, the president of the Supreme Student Council, and the president of the Federation of Alumni Association.
The same IRR states that the FAA president in SUCs with multiple campus shall preferably be previous graduates of tertiary programs.
The only exception in the IRR that allows the election of high school alumni as president of the alumni association is in the case of newly chartered SUCs which have yet to produce graduates in the tertiary level.
Gov. Azanza was elected as FAA president in an election of alumni association president by representing the CatSU Laboratory Schools high school alumni.
Understandably, his selection was a foregone conclusion when he was nominated for the position.
No one among the other alumni presidents, most of whom are either Azanza loyalists or individuals who owe him a debt of gratitude, could have mustered the courage to oppose someone already wielding power.
What the Tanael resolution seeks is the CHED’s definitive ad unequivocal pronouncement on whether state colleges and universities can go against the spirit of RA 8292 and its IRR that the Federation of Alumni Associations be represented in the Governing Board by graduates of tertiary programs.
It is worth noting that on the basis of the FAA’s alleged amendment of the board’s term of office from two to four years, benefiting the sitting board and not the succeeding one, Azanza will still be on the BOR by the time his term as governor expires in 2028.
As icing on the cake, he still gets to vote for the next university president to replace Acedo at the end of her stint, should he deem that her administration did not do enough to realize his “Paglaom” vision for the university.
Tossing aside the issue of legality, the governor’s annexing the BOR seat raises questions among critics about his hunger for power as he could have allowed anyone among his chosen loyalists to run for FAA president and win.
There was no chance of this happening, one observer insists, as Azanza had already planted the seed for high school alumni to participate in the FAA polls when he allowed relatively unknown secondary graduates to receive “outstanding alumni” awards during a university-wide recognition program before he resigned as president.
Grudgingly, even his most rabid enemy would agree by now that the governor is a stickler for preparation given the way he conducted his campaign and mowed down the Cua political dynasty.
Apparently, he abides by Abraham Lincoln’s wisdom on being given six hours to chop a tree: spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
Whose tree gets to be chopped by 2028 is anybody’s guess but it could be someone with an ethics problem.