President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has appointed new key officials to the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
According to documents provided by the Office of the Executive Secretary, retired Police Col. Procopio Gonzales Lipana is now the new General Manager of the MMDA, replacing Baltazar Melgar.
Former MMDA general manager Frisco San Juan Jr. also returns to the metropolitan traffic agency as its deputy chairman.
Lipana and San Juan took their oath of office before Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin at the Office of the Executive Secretary in Malacañang Palace on Thursday.
The OES added that retired Judge Felix Reyes, a former President of the Philippine Judges Association (PJA), took his oath of office on Monday as a member of the PCSO Board of Directors.
Reyes was a presiding judge of a Regional Trial Court branch in Marikina City.
Also taking their oaths before ES Bersamin were former police officers Moro Virgilio Lazo and Pierre Bucsit, who were appointed PDEA’s Director General and Deputy Director General, respectively. (See full story online at manilastandard.net)
Lazo served as chief of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) in 2015, while Bucsit served as deputy director of the PNP’s Directorate for Integrated Police Operations (DIPO) in Western Mindanao.
The appointments were confirmed by Office of the Press Secretary officer-in-charge Undersecretary Cheloy Velicaria-Garafil on Thursday night.
Lazo will replace Wilkins Villanueva as director general of the PDEA, the government’s lead agency against illegal drugs. He had served as a Presidential Security Group (PSG) member for the late former President Fidel V. Ramos.