Andres D. Bautista


Juan Andres "Andy" Donato Bautista is the former Chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Philippines and former Dean of the Institute of Law of Far Eastern University, a private, non-sectarian university in Manila, Philippines.
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 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 was the President of the Philippine Association of Law Schools from 2002 to 2005. He was also a bar reviewer in Constitutional Law at the National Bar Review Consortium, a 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, a member of the Supreme Court Committee on Legal Education and Bar Matters, a 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 as FEU Law dean by Atty. Mel Sta. Maria.

Commission on Elections

In August 2010, Bautista was appointed by President Benigno Aquino III as chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government.
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.
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 claimed by the Marcos camp was 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.
On October 11, 2017, Bautista announced his intention to resign as chairman of the Commission on Elections by the end of the year following claims by his wife Patricia of unexplained wealth, which he has denied. Hours after announcing his intent to resign, the House of Representatives voted 137–75–2 to impeach Bautista from the post, overturning the House Committee on Justice's earlier decision to discard the impeachment case. The articles of impeachment have yet to reach the Senate, which will serve as the impeachment court. On October 23, President Rodrigo Duterte formally accepted the resignation letter of Bautista effective immediately, instead of the initial date of December 31.

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, 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.