Palace to consult nursing ‘players’

By Sam Mediavilla, Reporter
Manila Times

Labor Secretary Arturo Brion said Sunday that he would request Court of Appeals Presiding Justice Vicente Veloso to open conciliation talks among stakeholders in the nursing industry to speed up the resolution of the board exam controversy.

The move, Brion told reporters in a telephone interview, was ordered by President Arroyo.

Brion said he and the President agreed that the judicial process would take a while, especially if losing parties seek a reconsideration of the ruling of CA’s First Division and elevate the issue to the Supreme Court.

The CA on Friday ordered a “selective retake” of the nursing licensure examination in June, directing 1,687 examinees to retake Tests 3 and 5.

“The President wants closure to the controversy through conciliation. There will be no more executive order. The ball is now in the court of the [CA] and we should abide by what the court will finally say,” Brion said.

He appealed to stakeholders to wait until the CA ruling becomes final before insisting that the suspended oath-taking of the board passers push through.

“Malacañang is not against the oath-taking of the passers but the CA decision is not yet final. Let us wait for the court’s final ruling,” he said.

Among the issues Brion said he would want to discuss during the conciliation meeting are the expenses to be incurred for the retake and the revamp of the Board of Nursing.

The retake, he reiterated, would be of no cost to the examinees because it would be shouldered by the government.

He said the Palace was considering changing all of the members of the nursing board. “The [board] has seven members, the chairman and the six members. Our main objective if we do this is to make sure that there are no doubts as to the integrity of the December licensure examination,” he said.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, in his weekly “View from the Palace” column, lamented that “the recent controversy surrounding the nursing licensure examination has struck a blow and unfairly brought a stigma to Filipino professionalism.”

He appealed to nursing industry players to “join hands to ensure that this never happens again. We have to protect the integrity and competitiveness of our students and professionals who comprise our principal and most important resources.”

He also said that the President has ordered the labor department, the Professional Regulatory Commission and the Commission on Higher Education to craft specific and concrete measures that would “insulate all licensure examinations and procedures, protect their integrity and clear the way of any doubts on the excellence of Filipino professionals.

In a related development, leakage whistleblower Dennis Cesar Bautista denounced before the Department of Justice the National Bureau of Investigation for allegedly covering up for the deficient charge sheet against the 17 respondents in the leakage scandal.

In a two-page Supplemental Sworn Statement he showed to The Manila Times, Bautista accused NBI Agents Palmer Mallari and Martini Cruz of the NBI Antifraud Division of “selective prosecution” after ignoring his disclosure that the leak reached Visayas and Mindanao.

In his pleading, Bautista said there were leakages in Cebu and Davao cities, which were Mallari and Cruz disregarded.

“I was deeply saddened when the National Bureau of Investigation publicly announced that the case on the leakage in the June 2006 Nurses Licensure Examination has been terminated and that cheating occurred only in Metro Manila and Baguio City,” Bautista said in his affidavit.

Cruz and Mallari “said there was no more need for me to execute a supplemental statement. I took that to mean that there were others who supplied the same information I gave them and that my statement was only superfluous or, at best, corroborative,” he said.

Bautista said there was a satellite feed in Cebu and Davao, which means that the leakage was “widespread” and not limited to Luzon. He said he himself witnessed the satellite feed in Cebu and Davao.

“While Ricarte Gapuz [owner of the Gapuz Review Center] was physically present at the Philippine Trade and Training Center, among his audience were the reviewees of his centers in Cebu City and Davao who were receiving final coaching by satellite feed. We could see our Davao and Cebu City counterparts via satellite,” Bautista said.

Of the 42,006 examinees, 26,000 were from Baguio and Manila or more than 50 percent of the board takers.

He cannot understand the real purpose of the denial of Cruz and Mallari to his latest testimony that, which if considered, could make a big difference in punishing the culprits of the leakages in Visayas and Mindanao.

Bautista told The Times that he executed this affidavit before the justice department to consider the newly discovered evidence that he disclosed, but was neglected by the NBI.