Wednesday, January 09, 2008 Court bars Joy from council By Oscar C. Pineda Sun.Star Staff Reporter
BARANGAY Captain Joy Ouano cannot sit today as an ex-officio member of the Mandaue City Council, after Executive Judge Marlyn Lagura-Yap restrained her from taking office as president of the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC).
Barangay Captain Glen Bercede welcomed the restraining order, issued hours after he and 19 other barangay captains went to the Palace of Justice yesterday morning to file their lawsuit against Ouano.
The night before the complaint was filed, Ouano took her oath of office as ABC president before Pampanga Rep. Mikey Arroyo, President Arroyo’s son.
Judge Yap’s order, however, prevents Ouano from acting as Mandaue City’s ABC president while the case for injunction and quo warranto is being tried. It will be raffled to a court branch today.
With Ouano as defendants in the case are Liga ng mga Barangay National President James Marty Lim and the Mandaue City Council headed by Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna.
Bercede’s counsel, Rod Bagaslao, said they included the vice mayor to prevent him from accepting Ouano in the City Council, which will hold their weekly session today.
Ouano was the previous Mandaue City ABC president. After her reelection in the Oct. 29 barangay elections, she again ran for ABC president last Dec. 29.
Conflict arose during the ABC elections when Ouano reportedly declared some of the captains of the city’s 27 barangays as not qualified to vote, because of unpaid dues.
That triggered a walkout of 18 barangay captains, who went to an adjacent room of the Cebu International Convention Center and unanimously elected Bercede as their new ABC president.
The conflict prompted the Board of Election Supervisors (BES) to declare a failure of election and this was one of the reasons majority of the city’s barangay captains sought court intervention.
Judge Yap, in her order, said the plaintiffs have shown “a clear and extreme urgency” for the issuance of a restraining order.
“Plaintiffs have also shown that they will suffer grave and irreparable injury if defendant Joy Ouano will be allowed to represent the Mandaue City Chapter in the National Liga and to sit as ex-officio member of the Sanggunian,” the order stated.
Bercede and other barangay captains make up the 20 plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. But two barangay captains, Dario Tariman of Tabok and Walter Dy of Subangdaku, did not sign the complaint.
Bercede said the two supported their move but refused to sign, for reasons he did not know.
