National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario has been elected the new chair of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). His election on Thursday will go to Malacañang for confirmation and formal appointment by President Duterte.
Malacañang is not expected to deny the appointment especially amid rumors last year he would be replaced as head of the Komisyon ng Wika by singer and Duterte campaigner Freddie Aguilar. Almario was retained.
Election to the NCCA chair is among the heads of the cultural agencies that sit on the NCCA board in an ex-officio capacity as well as the heads of the four Subcommisions—on Arts, on Culture and Heritage, Information and Dissemination, and Cultural Communities.
Almario, aka Rio Alma, is one of the country’s leading poets and writers in Filipino; he is a critic, scholar, literary historian and lexicographer. He was named National Artist in 1999.