Name Andres Bautista | ||
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Preceded by Christian Robert S. Lim Similar People Benigno Aquino III, Sixto Brillantes, Francis Pangilinan, Ayong Maliksi | ||
Juan Andrés "Andy" D. Bautista is the Chairman of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) of the Philippines and former Dean of the Institute of Law of Far Eastern University, a private, non-sectarian university in Manila, Philippines.
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Bautista is a member of the Consultative Commission on Charter Change, an independent body formed in 2005 by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to propose revisions to the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
He is a frequent resource speaker on topics concerning Philippine constitutional law and the state of legal education and profession in the country.
He was once nominated to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines.
Education
Bautista earned his Bachelor of Science in Legal management degree from Ateneo de Manila University in 1986, a Bachelor of Laws ((Class Valedictorian)) from Ateneo Law School in 1990, and a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1993.
Career
Bautista is the Dean of the Institute of Law at Far Eastern University and the Master of Business Administration-Juris Doctor dual degree program of De La Salle Graduate School of Business and Far Eastern University. He is concurrently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Makati Shangri-la Plaza Hotel.
Bautista is the President of the Philippine Association of Law Schools. He is a Bar Reviewer in Constitutional Law at the National Bar Review Consortium, Lecturer in Constitutional Law and Project Finance at the Ateneo Law School and Far Eastern University Institute of Law, a Trustee of the Philippine Judicial Academy, Member of the Supreme Court Committee on Legal Education and Bar Matters, Member of the Governing Board of the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Office, Vice President for Academic Affairs of the Philippine Constitution Association, as well as Director and Corporate Secretary of the British Chamber of Commerce
While still a law student, Bautista served as Judicial Clerk to then Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan from 1989 to 1992.
In 2014 he was replaced by Atty. Mel Sta. Maria as FEU Law dean.
In August 2010, Bautista was appointed by President Benigno Aquino III as chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government.
Commission on Elections
On April 28, 2015, President Benigno Aquino III signed Bautista's appointment as the new COMELEC chairman. This appointment played an important role in the 2016 General Elections in the Philippines, where many issues and accusations circulated in the media and online social networks about the alleged manipulation of the election results by the dominant political party at the time, Liberal Party (Philippines).
The camp of losing vice-presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. claimed that reports of irregularities in the hash code of the data provided by the COMELEC's transparency server. To rebuff these claims, COMELEC explains that this happened as the result of the correction of the character 'Ñ' which did not render properly in the output.
Another accusation clamied by the Marcos camp is the reports of another discrepancy in the data provided by the same transparency server, where the number of votes have been slightly decreased further. Bautista himself explained that this occurred as the result of their intentional act of removing the "test votes" which were apparently included in the official vote counts by accident, and reported by the transparency server.
International conferences
Bautista has been a reactor in the 18th IDP International Education Conference in Sydney in 2004, a participant in the bilateral discussions with the University of Nepal Faculty of Law in Kathmandu in 2002 (no such university name in Nepal), a reactor in the 21st Century Form of Legal Education in Beijing in 2001, a delegate in the Conference on Obstacles to Third World Development in 1988, and Captain of the Philippine Team in the World University Debating Championships also in 1986.