UNLIKE Vice President Leni Robredo, Commission on Higher Education Chairman Patricia Licuanan is not resigning despite an order banning her from all Cabinet meetings.
“In the meantime, I will continue my work as Chairperson of CHED,” she said in a statement shared on her Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Licuanan said she received a text message from Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr.
“On Sunday 04 December 2016, I received a message from Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. relaying President Rodrigo Duterte’s instructions to stop attending Cabinet meetings starting Monday, 05 December, 2 p.m.,” her statement read.
“I assured Secretary Evasco that I would comply,” Licuanan said.
Licuanan is an appointee of then President Benigno Aquino III with a fixed term until 2018.
Earlier, she told education stakeholders that she would stay at her post under the Duterte administration until July 2018.
The Palace said Licuanan was barred from Cabinet meetings because of “irreconcilable differences” with the President.
Communication Secretary Martin Andanar said there would be no effort to east out appointees from the previous administration.
Licuanan was first appointed by Aquino as CHED chairperson in 2010. Her second four-year term expires in 2018.
Duterte had earlier floated the idea of replacing Licuanan with Lapuz, his former professor at the Lyceum of the Philippines University.
The militant National Union of Students of the Philippines on Monday said they stand firm on their call for Licuanan’s resignation for persistently being “anti-student and pro-capitalist.”
“Patricia Licuanan is nothing but a manifestation of how those who are in power keep on protecting and forwarding the neoliberal interests of the capitalists on the people’s right to social services,” said Kevin Castro, NUSP spokesperson.
During her term, she supported tuition and other school fee increases and told students not to pursue college and to just finish technical-vocational courses to satisfy the global demand for cheap labor, Castro said.
“We are advising her to stop whatever she is doing at CHED and to resign now as its chairperson,” he said.