Manny Pangilinan 'irrevocably' resigns from Ateneo Board of Trustees

(Updated 6:20 PM) Businessman Manny Pangilinan announced on Friday that he is ‘irrevocably’ resigning from the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) Board of Trustees. Pangilinan made the announcement during a regular forum of sports writers where the businessman served as guest, according to GMA News’ JP Soriano. The businessman, chairman of the Ateneo Board of Trustees, earlier resigned from the board after he admitted “borrowing" lines for a speech he delivered in front of ADMU graduates. The board however declined Pangilinan’s resignation, expressing “full confidence" in his leadership. The ADMU administration has yet to release a formal statement on Pangilinan’s irrevocable resignation. Besides being the chairperson of the Ateneo Board of Trustees, Pangilinan also heads the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Co., the country's leading and largest telecommunications firm. PLDT and other units subsumed under it controls the Manila Electric Co., the Philippines' largest electric company. Pangilinan also heads Metro Pacific Investments Corp., which maintains tollways and is one of two partners in Maynilad, the water distributor in the Philippine capital's west zone. More plagiarized speeches? In the same forum, Pangilinan declined to comment on reports that he also copied some portions of his earlier speeches from several other sources. Pangilinan said he already feels “bruised" by the controversy sparked by his commencement speeches at the At In a Facebook note entitled "plagiarized speeches since 2007," written on April 13, writer and Ateneo faculty member Katrina Stuart Santiago said that "whoever MVP's [Pangilinan's] speechwriters are, they've been giving him plagiarized speeches since 2007." Santiago then proceeded to list three other speeches delivered by Pangilinan in 2007, 2009 and 2010 that were apparently plagiarized, providing links to seven original speeches that apparently served as sources of the plagiarized speeches. Reports on more “plagiarized" Pangilinan speeches drew flak from social media users on the Internet, some even students and alumni from ADMU. “As an Atenean, I for one feel very much ashamed that a fellow Blue-blood — one of our most successful and prolific alumni, no less — was involved in such a disgraceful incident, and I am outraged at how the good name of my alma mater has been tarnished by it," said ADMU alumna Ailee Lim in her blog. Pangilinan however refused to comment further on the issue, saying he just wants to “move forward." - with Jacques Jimeno/RJAB/HS, GMANews.TV