Melo named Comelec chair

FORMER Supreme Court Justice Jose A.R. Melo has been named the new chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec). He replaced Benjamin Abalos Sr. who resigned in the midst of last year’s scandal that linked him to the controversial national broadband network project.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo made the announcement from Davos, Switzerland, while attending the World Economic Forum. “You see how credible he was with the Melo report. All, even the UN (United Nations), they all took off from his own report,” Arroyo told reporters.

Melo, 75, served for 23 years in the judiciary and was then President Fidel Ramos’s first Supreme Court appointee in 1992. He was previously an acting presiding justice of the Court of Appeals, where he held a record of having a zero backlog of cases.

He is a “man who has not forgotten his roots and a magistrate who expeditiously afforded justice to every man,” said former Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. in a 2002 tribute, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The report also described Melo as a “God-fearing family man” known for his integrity and zeal to quickly resolve cases.

Melo spent a total of 40 years in public service. In 1962, he joined government as an executive assistant in the Malacañang legal office during the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal. He entered the Office of the Solicitor General in 1971, and was concurrent acting commissioner of the Professional Regulation Commission until 1975. In 1979, he was appointed commissioner of the Civil Service Commission before being named to the Court of Appeals. Melo was also a “confidential assistant” to the chair of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission and an adviser in the Philippine National Bank.

Born in Pampanga, Melo finished his law degree at the Manuel L. Quezon School of Law and later joined the firm of Senator Jose W. Diokno. In 1960, he obtained his master of law degree, with the highest grade of “meritissimus,” from the University of Santo Tomas.

The former justice was also nominated to the Comelec chairmanship by a committee of electoral reform advocates led by former Comelec chairman Christian Monsod. “Retired Justice Jose Melo brings with him a highly respectable record in the Supreme Court and a long and distinguished career in public service…As the chair of the Melo Commission, he showed independence with a transparent investigative process and a forthright report on the issue of extrajudicial and agrarian reform-related killings,” the committee said in a letter to Arroyo. He was endorsed to the committee by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting.

Melo was included in a five-person short list submitted by the Palace search committee to the President. Even then, the President reportedly favored Melo for the poll body’s chairmanship.

There was widespread skepticism when the President appointed Melo to head a fact-finding commission to investigate extra-judicial killings. Human rights organization and families of victims of human rights violations would go on to boycott the commission’s proceedings.

Despite fears that the commission was a Palace mouthpiece, it later released a 79-page report that found circumstantial evidence linking some elements of the military to extrajudicial killings, although there was no official State policy that sanctioned such killings.