By ELLEN TORDESILLAS
THE Union of Foreign Service Officers has taken the position that the nomination of businessman Alfonso Yuchengco as ambassador to Germany is void as there is no Commission on Appointments to act on it in the remaining 92 days of the Arroyo administration.
“It is a useless nomination to a nonexistent body. It’s void. There is no CA to confirm his nomination which is necessary to obtain his agrément from the German government,” said Victoria Bataclan, UNIFORS president.
An agrément is the acceptance of the receiving state of the ambassador being sent by another state. Without an agrément, the ambassador could not present his credentials to the receiving head of state. Unless he has presented his credentials, he has no official personality in that country.
Last week, President Arroyo directed Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo to submit to the Commission on Appointments her nomination of 87-year-old Yuchengco as ambassador to Germany dated March 9, two days before the start of the 60-day ban on presidential appointments.
Yuchengco, who had served as ambassador to China (1986 to 1988), Japan (1995) and the United Nations (2001), would be replacing Ambassador Delia Albert, who was recently awarded “Most Outstanding Filipino Woman in Global Diplomacy.”
A Foreign Service officer who asked that his identity be withheld suspects the nomination was antedated.
The Commission on Appointments is not scheduled to convene before June 30. Congress is on recess and will convene after the May 10 elections only as a national board of canvassers and to proclaim the winner in the presidential elections.
Yuchengco’s appointment goes against the recommendation of Sen. Miriam Santiago, chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations, sent to Arroyo on Dec. 16, 2009 to make “no ‘midnight’ political appointment to the diplomatic service.”
Santiago said, “It appears that for each new appointment, the government will spend more or less P10 million for relocating both the incumbent and the successor. Ordinarily, this can’t be helped.”
“But if there are only six months left of an incumbent president’s tenure, this would be unnecessary expense because the new president will likely make his own political appointments,” she said.
This was the basis for rejecting the nomination of Cebu Rep. Antonio Cuenco as ambassador to Italy.
UNIFORS also raised the issue of Yuchengco’s age. Section 23 of The Foreign Service Act states, “All officers and employees of the Department who have reached the age of sixty-five (65) shall be compulsorily and automatically retired from Service. Provided, however, That all incumbent noncareer chiefs of mission who are seventy (70) years old and above shall continue to hold office until June 30,1992 unless sooner removed by the appointing authority.”
Bataclan also said since political ambassadors are co-terminus with the appointing authority, “by operation of law, political ambassadors should be out of their country of assignments on or before June 30, 2010.”