Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Ombud wants status quo in PAO
THE Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas wants a status quo order issued to quell the row at the Public Attorney’s Office.
But Assistant Ombudsman Virginia Santiago doesn’t want the anti-graft office to issue it. Instead, she wants the Chief Public Attorney to take the initiative.
“I am now preparing a letter addressed to the Chief Public Attorney (Persida Ruedas-Acosta) to ask for the order. I want to ask her if she could hold in abeyance the transfer order she issued,” Santiago said.
Santiago added that she will also be asking Acosta on the status of the contracts of some assistant public attorneys whose appointments have already expired and those whose appointments will expire today.
“Right now, the concern of the office is to make sure that service to the public aren’t hampered in anyway. Our concern are those jail inmates the public attorney’s office is representing in court whose case will be affected because there is trouble within PAO,” Santiago said.
She said that by law, the Office of the Ombudsman has jurisdiction over all complaints, even those that are administrative in nature, stemming from the current crisis at the PAO.
Conference
Santiago held a conference with the conflicting parties at her office yesterday.
Present were Regional Public Attorney Maria G-Ree Calinawan and the assistant public attorneys of the Cebu City Division, together with division chief Elisa Porio, who earlier petitioned for her transfer outside Cebu.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Attorney Silvestre Mosing, who just flew from Manila together with another Manila-based lawyer, was also present during the event.
Mosing, during the conference, asked the parties to refrain from talking to the media until the matter is resolved.
He assured that the central office is taking notice of the conflict brewing at the regional agency and is acting with dispatch.
Santiago believes that the the conflict at the Public Attorney’s Office can still be settled within PAO.
“For now, we will act only on the two complaints specifically filed with our office and leave it to the PAO to resolve the allegations raised in the petition the assistant public attorneys filed against their regional director and the administrative complaint the regional director filed against them,” Santiago said.
Mosing, during the conference, assured that the Chief Public Attorney is acting on the petition the assistant public attorneys signed and sent to Manila last February.
In fact, he said, he has has been assigned to look into the allegations raised in the petition, which included charges of oppression, misconduct and graft, including making a subordinate sign and hand over to her some blank office checks.
‘Escalation’
They described her actuation as “an escalation of abusive, oppressive, coercive, vindictive acts and immoral, unbecoming conduct.”
But Acosta, Mosing said, is also giving due course to the administrative complaint that Calinawan filed against the assistant public attorneys after the petition became public.
Calinawan, in a complaint dated March 5, had charged the assistant public attorneys of insubordination and accused them of releasing copies of the petition to the media.
Acosta, right after receiving the complaint, directed the assistant public attorneys to explain.
But while Acosta acted on the administrative complaint, the assistant public attorneys didn’t know what had happened to the petition until Mosing surfaced yesterday.
Mosing, however, didn’t stay long in Cebu despite his statement that he will be investigating the allegations contained in the petition against Calinawan. He didn’t speak with the assistant public attorneys after the hearing to ask about their complaint.
He left for Manila at around 3 p.m. yesterday. (KNR)
