Tuesday, January 23, 2007 Town mayor sues graft complainants
AFTER getting dragged to the anti-graft office weeks before the election period began, Madridejos Mayor Lety Mancio is fighting back.
She filed a P10-million libel complaint against those who lodged the graft charge against her—Vice Mayor Virgilio Atienza and Councilors Emelita Mates-Gabito, Delfin Santillan, Recline Asentista, Randulph Rivera, Isaias Bacolod, Reynaldo Bonsanto, Bernabe Compra and Owen Daruca.
She also impleaded Ramil Ayuman, a reporter of The Freeman newspaper, and his editor-in-chief, Jerry Tundag, in the complaint before the Office of the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor.
Good faith
Ayuman, when sought for comment, said the story constitutes privileged communication and was written in good faith.
“We have no part in whatever political conflicts they may have,” he said in Cebuano. Ayuman also works as a broadcast reporter of ABS-CBN and sits as a member of the Apas Barangay Council.
In a separate interview, Councilor Gabito believes she is being “harassed” by Mancio’s camp.
Gabito is asking why she is the lone respondent in P10-million libel suit Mancio filed earlier. She issued the statement after she learned that the mayor filed another libel complaint, with her and other town officials as respondents.
Gabito said that of all the officials who had turned their back on Mancio, she alone got the mayor’s ire.
Gabito ran in 2004 under the ticket of Mancio. Last year, she and other officials withdrew their support for the mayor.
But Mancio’s lawyer Nathaniel Clarus denied the accusations of Gabito.
Clarus said the basis of the P10-million libel suit filed against Gabito was the TV interview she had after filing a graft complaint against Mancio before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas. The libel complaint filed yesterday against Gabito, the vice mayor and seven other councilors was based on the newspaper accounts on the graft and corruption charges they filed against the mayor.
Town funds
In the complaint, Vice Mayor Atienza and eight councilors, including Gabito, accused Mancio of unauthorized disbursement of P7.3 million in municipal funds.
They also cited Mancio’s failure to account for P17 million worth of municipal properties and accused her of releasing money without council authority.
Mancio denied all the accusations, saying the upcoming election is the only reason for the allegations.
Mancio, in her three-page complaint, said the respondents conspired against her by filing the complaint and then publicizing the filing before the media.
“The accusations constitute a public and malicious imputation of a crime, or a defect, which is real or imaginary, and made only to cause dishonor, discredit or contempt on my part,” she said in the complaint prepared by Clarus.
Mancio said an audit certificate from the Commission on Audit was already issued on the transactions.
“(The complainants) have an ulterior motive and malicious intention to damage my good name and reputation. In fact, they took the opportunity of making such insult while I was out of the country,” she said.
“Worse, they invited media personalities in going to the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas,” Mancio further said.
As a result, she lamented, the complaint became public even before the anti-graft office could evaluate it.
“I was already publicly condemned without due process of law,” she said. (KNR/KNT)
