MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario and Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio delos Reyes Tuesday got the nod of the bicameral Commission on Appointments.

Concurrent CA chairman Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile gave his nod to Del Rosario and Delos Reyes as well as to the appointments of the 21 ambassadors and the ad interim appointments of 39 officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The nominations of the ambassadors and that of the other 12 chiefs of mission, class I, 10 chiefs of mission class II, nine career ministers and eight foreign service officers (FSOs) is the largest number of envoys submitted to the Commission by the 10-month administration of President Aquino.

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, chair of the CA’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, favorably endorsed for the confirmation of their appointments.

Delos Reyes’ capability to accomplish over all land reform was decided briefly by the Committee on Agrarian Reform chaired by Sen. Panfilo Lacson.

This, even after Delos Reyes agreed with the proposition that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of the country was a failure.

“With a qualified yes: Qualified in the sense, it was a failure since we should have finished this many years ago. But because we are now on the 22nd year of CARP... it is a failure only because of the fact it has taken us too long to be able to finish it when other countries finished it much faster,” Delos Reyes told the committee.

Lacson made a motion recommending his confirmation for plenary.

But during the hearing, Del Rosario’s confirmation was held for a short while when the appointments body heard the sworn opposition filed by a certain Mr. Chung Hing Wong a.k.a. Joseph Wong.

Wong tried to block the nomination of Del Rosario by accusing him syndicated estafa when the latter was still a director of a private development bank.

Wong, who came to the committee hearing unaccompanied by a lawyer, had difficulty answering questions thrown by Santiago.

But when Santiago asked if he has evidence, the businessman could not produce proof to back up his claims but merely said that Del Rosario did not file a counter affidavit in the case he filed at the Department of Justice (DoJ).

Irked by his unpreparedness, Santiago berated Wong and reminded members of the committee that the CA does not function as a court and litigate cases but merely assesses the qualifications of a nominee for a certain government position.

Santiago had to literally “throw out” the oppositor out of the session hall and branded his action as “contemptuous."