Ruling raises issue involving former mayor

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

THE Court of Appeals (CA) has upheld an ombudsman decision on the lamppost case, which finds Thadeo Ouano administratively liable and directs that his service record be made to reflect that he was once dismissed from service.

The penalty of dismissal from service from an administrative case comes with the “ancillary penalty of perpetual disqualification from service,” Assistant Ombudsman Virginia Palanca-Santiago said yesterday.

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How will this affect the political career of Ouano, who was mayor of Mandaue when he signed the contract for the allegedly overpriced lampposts and who is presently a member of the Provincial Board (PB) of Cebu?

Santiago told reporters that the issue needs to be raised so that the ombudsman central office would come up with a ruling.

CA

She said the issue might be raised before the CA in the next couple of days as respondents in the lamppost case have filed a motion for reconsideration.

The appellate court has given the anti-graft office 10 days to answer, Santiago said.

If the matter is not addressed in the CA, she said, “some parties might make a formal inquiry before the anti-graft office or the Regional Trial Court (RTC).”

“That will be resolved in the proper forum,” she said.

Atty. Victor Maambong, lawyer and spokesperson for Ouano, said whatever confusion arose from the case is caused by “intrinsic ambiguity” in the original anti-graft office ruling.

He said the ombudsman ruling declares the penalty against Ouano moot and academic, because the former mayor cannot be booted out of an office he no longer occupies.

Doctrine

He added that the ruling also provides that Ouano’s election to the PB made him eligible for the protection offered by the Aguinaldo Doctrine.

The ruling considers re-election as a form of “condonation” by the electorate of a public official’s “previous misconduct.”

Santiago recalled three public officials, earlier dismissed from service and
perpetually barred from holding any government post, who ran for public office in 2010 and won.

This, she said, was because the Commission on Elections (Comelec) was not informed that the officials concerned had been convicted and barred.

She quoted a Comelec official who said the three officials could no longer be unseated because quo warranto petitions are only valid if filed within seven days after the officials took oath.

Santiago said this is why they now furnish the Comelec copies of their rulings in administrative cases where the ancillary penalty of perpetual disqualification to hold office is imposed.

The CA, in a ruling penned last August but received by the anti-graft office the following month, upheld the anti-graft office’s earlier ruling that found all 14 officials, including Ouano, guilty for the overpriced purchase and installation of 1,800 decorative lampposts in the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu.

The lampposts were obtained to beautify the city during the 2007 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit held in Cebu that year.

Ouano and then Lapu-Lapu City Mayor were among those charged in the case. But unlike Ouano, Radaza was cleared by the anti-graft office while the case was still pending because he got re-elected during the general elections held in May 14, 2007.

Ouano was not re-elected. His term expired. He only got elected to the Provincial Board in May 2010.