Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra out of Marcos Cabinet

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The new solicitor general is Darlene Marie Berberabe, who will leave her post as dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law

MANILA, Philippines – Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra is out of the Marcos Cabinet, he confirmed to Rappler on Thursday, March 29.

“Atty. Darlene has taken her oath today. I will turn over the reins to her tomorrow,” Guevarra told Rappler.

This is the second wave of changes in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Cabinet.

Guevarra’s replacement as solicitor general is Darlene Marie Berberabe, who will leave her post as dean of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law.

Berberabe previously served as chief executive officer of PAG-IBIG.

After suffering midterm blows both in terms of the 2025 Senate race results and his public approval ratings, Marcos asked all Cabinet secretaries to hand in their courtesy resignations on May 22, to give him a free hand in revamping government agencies where needed.

The first revamp was announced a day after, on May 23. At the time, it was widely speculated that Guevarra would be on the chopping block, but he was reportedly not included then as his replacement was not yet sealed.

In March, Guevarra refused to defend the Marcos government at the Supreme Court, in the multiple cases filed by the children of former president Rodrigo Duterte challenging the constitutionality of his arrest and turnover to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In a technical sense, Guevarra’s reason for his recusal is aligned with the official Marcos line, that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Philippines after Duterte’s withdrawal in 2019. Politically, the Marcos administration has found a legal design to justify the arrest — that they were complying with the Interpol’s request, and following the domestic International Humanitarian Law requiring Philippine authorities to hand over a crime against humanity suspect wanted by an international court. (Read this explainer for more details.)

Guevarra, who is supposed to be the statutory counsel of the government, invoked his role as “tribune of the people,” leading observers to believe that his days in the Marcos Cabinet were numbered. Two years before the ICC arrest, Guevarra spearheaded the move to beef up the Philippine government’s appeal to junk jurisdiction, a bid they nearly won. This 3-2 decision of the ICC appeals chamber in July 2023, specifically the dissenting opinions of the two judges, have reinforced Duterte’s pending jurisdictional challenge in the ICC.

Guevarra is a close friend and a law firm partner of Salvador Medialdea, a close friend of Duterte who served as his executive secretary throughout his presidency.

But Guevarra also has close ties to Marcos, specifically through First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos. They were batch mates at the Ateneo de Manila School of Law, and the first lady worked as an associate in Guevarra and Medialdea’s law firm.

During this time, the De Borja, Medialdea, Ata, Bello, Guevarra and Serapio Law Office represented Marcos’ mother, the dictator’s widow Imelda Marcos, in the Supreme Court in a case that resulted in the family being charged estate tax worth P23 billion. It was a decision affirmed by the Court in 1997, and the estate tax had possibly ballooned to P203 billion today due to surcharges and penalties, according to the estimates of critics who tried but failed to block Marcos’ candidacy in 2022.

Guevarra was among Marcos’ early appointees, securing the solicitor general post even when was still justice secretary in the final weeks of the Duterte presidency. Before heading the Department of Justice (DOJ) from 2018 to June 2022, Guevarra was Medialdea’s deputy at the Office of the Executive Secretary. Before that, he served as deputy executive secretary for legal affairs in Malacañang during the Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III presidency.

As Duterte’s justice secretary, Guevarra had made some dissenting actions too, including a drug war review that sought to reinvestigate local police who killed suspects in the war on drugs. The review, however, showed dismal results. Drug war critics say the review was always meant to be a ruse to keep the ICC at bay (ICC’s complementarity feature allows the court stepping aside if there is genuine local investigation). – Rappler.com