Reynaldo Umali

Umali was born on February 26, 1957, in Quezon City to Alfonso Umali Sr., a governor of Oriental Mindoro, and Alberta Villar-Umali. He is the brother of Representatives Alfonso Umali and Ma. Victoria Umali of A Teacher Partylist.[3]

Umali attended San Beda University for his elementary and secondary education.[4] He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics degree from Ateneo de Manila University and his Bachelor of Laws degree from Manuel L. Quezon University. He also studied at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he obtained a certificate program in Executive Management.[3]

He passed the Philippine Bar Examination in 1988[5] and was a member of the Lambda Rho Beta fraternity.[6]

Umali was a practicing lawyer before he entered government service.[3] His first government job was at the National Economic and Development Authority where he worked as an economist and division chief.[7][8] He also worked for former Representative Gerardo Cabochan of Caloocan as his legislative chief of staff.[3] He served as the director of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council Secretariat from 1990 to 1992.[1] From 2005 to 2010, he worked at the Bureau of Customs as its legal office chief and as deputy commissioner. During his term as Customs Deputy Commissioner, he and his team drafted the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act. He was also the executive director of the bureau's Run After the Smugglers (RATS) program.[7]

Congressman

Umali's official portrait during the 17th Congress

Umali was first elected to Congress in 2010 as a Liberal Party candidate. He replaced his brother who was in his third consecutive term and was ineligible to run. During his term in the 15th Congress, he was the vice chairman of the House Committees on Constitutional Amendments, Good Governance and Public Accountability, Justice, and Ways and Means; and member of the Committees on Appropriations, Aquaculture and Fisheries Resources, Games and Amusements, Information and Communications Technology, National Cultural Communities, Social Services, Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, and Tourism. He also pushed for the impeachments of former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and Chief Justice Renato Corona.[7] During the Corona impeachment trial, he was a member of the prosecution team and was the lead prosecutor of the 8th article of impeachment.[9][10]

Umali ran for a second term in 2013 again under the Liberal Party where he became the deputy spokesperson of the party's National Political Council.[11] During the 16th Congress, he was chairman of the House Committee on Energy and co-chairman of the Joint Congressional Power Commission.[7]

In the 2016 House of Representatives elections, Umali still ran under the Liberal Party.[12] However, in July 2016, he left the party and joined the ruling PDP–Laban of President Rodrigo Duterte.[13][14] During the 17th Congress, he was the chairman of the House Committee on Justice which tackled the impeachment proceedings of then-Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and the investigation regarding the New Bilibid Prison drug trafficking scandal.[8] Being the Justice Committee chair, he also served as an ex-officio member of the Judicial and Bar Council.[7]

After serving three consecutive terms in Congress, Umali was barred from running another term. In the 2019 gubernatorial elections, he ran as governor of Oriental Mindoro under the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas[15] but lost to PDP–Laban candidate Humerlito Dolor.

Umali was married to Ma. Linda Tantoco-Umali and had six children.[7]

On December 12, 2020, Umali went for a medical check-up following previous visits that had diagnosed him with having fatty liver disease.[16] During that check-up, Umali tested positive for COVID-19 and was also found to have Stage 3 liver cancer.[2][16] After a few days, his condition aggravated into Stage 4 liver cancer and he was later admitted to the intensive care unit on December 21.[17] On December 26, he was intubated and on the morning of January 7, 2021, he went into cardiac arrest and died.[2]