THE Regional Trial Court (RTC) is expected to rule today on the injunction suit a public lawyer and a colleague filed against their regional chief and overall head.
Sources at the RTC Branch 11 said Judge Ramon Daomilas Jr. had been working overtime on the case that originally intended to stop lawyer Elisa Porio, head of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) Cebu City office, and Mrs. Carmelita Dacanay, the regional administrative officer, from getting transferred to Barili.
They said the transfer was motivated by ill will. They said this was because they both supported a petition signed against lawyer Maria G-Ree Calinawan, the PAO 7 chief.
It was the same ill will, Porio had said in an earlier interview, which motivated Calinawan not to recommend the renewal of appointment for seven other lawyers. All seven lawyers, she said, also signed the petition.
The four-page petition, dated Feb. 18, 2008, said the assistant public attorneys of the Cebu City Division raised several questions, one of which was Calinawan’s supposed method of controlling the agency’s disbursement of funds.
She supposedly replaced an employee who for years had been in charge of the function with a confidant. This resulted in funds not reaching the district offices.
Disciplinary
They also charged her with issuing disciplinary memoranda on the basis of unsubstantiated information. They said she also embarrassed lawyers and staff members by falsely accusing them of wrongdoing in the presence of their clients.
They said, Calinawan allegedly has a child with a married policeman with whom she supposedly continues to maintain an illicit relationship.
The petition is separate from two formal charges a lawyer and a staff member filed against Calinawan before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.
Calinawan, together with Chief Public Attorney Persida Rueda-Acosta, had represented themselves in the hearing Daomilas called on the injunction suit.
Jurisdiction
They filed a motion seeking a dismissal of the suit citing jurisdiction. They said the matter of reassigning lawyers and staff members is an internal matter. Controversies surrounding this, they said, were better left to the Civil Service Commission.
They said Porio and Dacanay have no legal right to what was allegedly violated, explaining that assistant public attorneys like them can be transferred anywhere.
They said the reassignment order was legal and that it is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Civil Service Commission.
“Whatever legal remedy available to petitioners herein for them to legally (and correctly) challenge their reassignment is still premature as they basically jumped the gun,” they added.
Calinawan described the accusations against her as baseless. She said she will answer them in the proper venue. (KNR )
