A candidate was filing his certificate of candidacy (COC) at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Mandaue City when the building started to shake violently.
As assistant election officer Jacqueline Reuyan relates, it was the period for the filing of COCs for the barangay elections when the magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Bohol and Cebu on Oct. 15, 2013.
Five years after it killed scores of people, including a vendor struck by debris in the public market behind the Mandaue City Cultural and Sports Complex, Reuyan’s memories remain vivid. The Comelec office was on the third floor of a building behind the sports complex. As her officemates fled the building, one candidate had just submitted a COC.
“We were very scared. But our fear mixed with laughter when we saw the candidate hugging a pillar in our office. The candidate said, ‘Lord, please stop the shaking because I still want to run for public office,’” Reuyan recalled.
“The shaking was so strong it pried the metal from the stairs. I thought the stairs would collapse,” said Evelyn Cueva, another assistant election officer. “And we also had teachers there for a seminar on serving as Board of Election Teller members. There was a stampede, so some were trampled upon.”
This is the reason they are much relieved that last Oct. 8, their office was transferred to the ground floor of a building beside the sports complex. Mandaue Mayor Luigi Quisumbing had had their office transferred to make it more accessible to senior citizens and persons with disabilities.
Courthouse in limbo
The quake damaged P819 million worth of public infrastructure in Cebu, including the Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan Hall of Justice in the Capitol compound.
The Palace of Justice building was declared unsafe after the fourth floor and courtrooms in the east wing were severely damaged. Some 30 trial court branches and other attached agencies were then transferred to Qimonda in the North Reclamation Area in Cebu City.
Five years on, the future of the new courthouse at the South Road Properties (SRP) in Cebu City remains in limbo.
While the Cebu City Government is still processing the donation of the 1.5-hectare lot worth more than P70 million to the Supreme Court (SC), the budget for the construction of the new courthouse has not been finalized, said Cebu City Executive Judge Macaundas Hadjirasul.
The proposed judicial complex will house the 22 Regional Trial Court (RTC) branches and eight Municipal Trial Courts in Cities (MTCC), the mediation center, social worker’s office, and the civil and criminal divisions of both the RTC and MTCC, and the Court of Appeals.
“Once we will have the judicial complex at the SRP, we will vacate the old Palace of Justice,” said Hadjirasul. The City Prosecutor’s Office continues to occupy the ground floor of the building.
Hadjirasul has no idea what the SC intends to do with the old courthouse. “We are not returning yet, so we will not retrofit or repair it,” he said.
But there is more clarity on the new Department of Justice (DOJ) building. Set to be completed this year, the P100-million new DOJ-Cebu building inside a Capitol-owned lot in Barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City fronting the ombudsman’s office will house prosecutors and personnel of the Office of the Regional State Prosecutor, Office of the City and Provincial Prosecutors, and other attached agencies.
The DOJ now rents space at the Taft Commercial Center on Osmeña Blvd., Cebu City for the prosecutors’ offices and Public Attorney’s Office that used to occupy the ground and second floor of the Palace of Justice before the quake damaged their offices. (GMD, FMDD)